Stack 

Annex 

BJ 

1477 

S373s 

1900z 


STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM 


BY 


ARTHUR  SCHOPENHAUER 


SELECTED  AND    TRANSLATED 


BY 


T.    BAILEY    SAUNDERS,    M.A, 


Vitam  impendere  vero.  — JUVENAL 


NEW  YORK 
THE  HUMBOLDT  PUBLISHING  CO 

19    ASTOR    PLACE 


CONTENTS 


I. — ON  THE  SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  WORLD  -        .        ...        5 

II. — ON  THE  VANITY  OF  EXISTENCE  -        -        -        -        -        -16 

III. — ON  SUICIDE       -  ......       20 

IV. — IMMORTALITY:  A  DIALOGUE  ...  -       25 

V. — FURTHER  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS       -  29 

VI. — ON  EDUCATION  --  .....44 

VII.— ON  NOISE  5o 

VIII. — A  FEW  PARABLES      -------.      54 


ON  THE  SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  WORLD. 


UNLESS  suffering  is  the  direct  and  immediate  object  of  life,  our  ex- 
istence must  entirely  fail  of  its  aim.  It  is  absurd  to  look  upon  the 
enormous  amount  of  pain  that  abounds  everywhere  in  the  world,  and 
originates  in  needs  and  necessities  inseparable  from  life  itself,  as  serving 
no  purpose  at  all  and  the  result  of  mere  chance.  Each  separate  misfor- 
tune, as  it  comes,  seems,  no  doubt,  to  be  something  exceptional ;  but 
misfortune  in  general  is  the  rule. 

I  know  of  no  greater  absurdity  than  that  propounded  by  most  systems 
of  philosophy  in  declaring  evil  to  be  negative  in  its  character.  Evil  is 
just  what  is  positive ;  it  makes  its  own  existence  felt.  Leibnitz  is  par- 
ticularly concerned  to  defend  this  absurdity  ;  and  he  seeks  to  strengthen 
his  position  by  using  a  palpable  and  paltry  sophism. '  It  is  the  good 
which  is  negative  ;  in  other  words,  happiness  and  satisfaction  always  im- 
ply some  desire  fulfilled,  some  state  of  pain  brought  to  an  end. 

This  explains  the  fact  that  we  generally  find  pleasure  to  be  not  nearly 
so  pleasant  as  we  expected,  and  pain  very  much  more  painful. 

The  pleasure  in  this  world,  it  has  been  said,  outweighs  the  pain  ;  or, 
at  any  rate,  there  is  an  even  balance  between  the  two.  If  the  reader 
wishes  to  see  shortly  whether  this  statement  is  true,  let  him  compare  the 
respective  feelings  of  two  animals,  one  of  which  is  engaged  in  eating  the 
other. 

The  best  consolation  in  misfortune  or  affliction  of  any  kind  will  be  the 
thought  of  other  people  who  are  in  a  still  worse  plight  than  yourself ; 
and  this  is  a  form  of  consolation  open  to  every  one.  But  what  an  awful 
fate  this  means  for  mankind  as  a  whole  ! 

We  are  like  lambs  in  a  field,  disporting  themselves  under  the  eye  of  the 

J  Translator's  Note,  cf.  The'od,  §  153,  Leibnitz  argued  that  evil  is  a  negative  qual- 
ity— ».  *.,  the  absence  of  good  ;  and  that  its  active  and  seemingly  positive  character  is 
an  incidental  and  not  an  essential  part  of  its  nature.  Cold,  he  said,  is  only  the  absence 
of  the  power  of  heat,  and  the  active  power  of  expansion  in  freezing  water  is  an  inci- 
dental and  not  an  essential  part  of  the  nature  of  cold.  The  fact  is,  that  the  power  of 
•expansion  in  freezing  water  is  really  an  increase  of  repulsion  amongst  its  molecules ;  and 
Schopenhauer  is  quite  right  in  calling  the  whole  argument  a  sophism. 

5 


6  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

butcher,  who  chooses  out  first  one  and  then  another  for  his  prey.  So- 
il is  that  in  our  good  days  we  are  all  unconscious  of  the  evil  Fate  may 
have  presently  in  store  for  us — sickness,  poverty,  mutilation,  loss  of  sight 
or  reason. 

No  little  part  of  the  torment  of  existence  lies  in  this,  that  Time  is  con- 
tinually pressing  upon  us,  never  letting  us  take  breath,  but  always  com- 
ing after  us,  like  a  taskmaster  with  a  whip.  If  at  any  moment  Time 
stays  his  hand,  it  is  only  when  we  are  delivered  over  to  the  misery  of 
boredom. 

But  misfortune  has  its  uses  ;  for,  as  our  bodily  frame  would  burst 
asunder  if  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere  were  removed,  so,  if  the  lives 
of  men  were  relieved  of  all  need,  hardship  and  adversity ;  if  everything 
they  took  in  hand  were  successful,  they  would  be  so  swollen  with  arro- 
gance that,  though  they  might  not  burst,  they  would  present  the  specta- 
cle of  unbridled  folly — nay,  they  would  go  mad.  And  I  may  say,  further, 
that  a  certain  amount  of  care  or  pain  or  trouble  is  necessary  for  every  man 
at  all  times.  A  ship  without  ballast  is  unstable  and  will  not  go  straight. 

Certain  it  is  that  work,  worry,  labor  and  trouble,  form  the  lot  of  almost 
all  men  their  whole  life  long.  But  if  all  wishes  were  fulfilled  as  soon  as 
they  arose,  how  would  men  occupy  their  lives  ?  what  would  they  do  with 
their  time  ?  If  the  world  were  a  paradise  of  luxury  and  ease,  a  land  flowing 
with  milk  and  honey,  where  every  Jack  obtained  his  Jill  at  once  and  with- 
out any  difficulty,  men  would  either  die  of  boredom  or  hang  themselves  ; 
or  there  would  be  wars,  massacres,  and  murders  ;  so  that  in  the  end  man- 
kind would  inflict  more  suffering  on  itself  than  it  has  now  to  accept  at  the 
hands  of  Nature. 

In  early  youth,  as  we  contemplate  our  coming  life,  we  are  like  children 
in  a  theatre  before  the  curtain  is  raised,  sitting  there  in  high  spirits  and 
eagerly  waiting  for  the  play  to  begin.  It  is  a  blessing  that  we  do  not 
know  what  is  really  going  to  happen.  Could  we  foresee  it,  there  are  times 
when  children  might  seem  like  innocent  prisoners,  condemned,  not  to 
death,  but  to  life,  and  as  yet  all  unconscious  of  what  their  sentence 
means.  Nevertheless,  every  man  desires  to  reach  old  age  ;  in  other  words, 
a  state  of  life  of  which  it  may  be  said  :  "  It  is  bad  to-day,  and  it  will  be 
worse  to-morrow  ;  and  so  on  till  the  worst  of  all." 

If  you  try  to  imagine,  as  nearly  as  you  can,  what  an  amount  of  misery, 
pain  and  suffering  of  every  kind  the  sun  shines  upon  in  its  course,  you 
will  admit  that  it  would  be  much  better  if,  on  the  earth  as  little  as  on  the 
moon,  the  sun  were  able  to  call  forth  the  phenomena  of  life ;  and  if,  here 
as  there,  the  surface  were  still  in  a  crystalline  state. 

Again,  you  may  look  upon  life  as  an  unprofitable  episode,  disturbing 
the  blessed  calm  of  non-existence.  And,  in  any  case,  even  though  things 
have  gone  with  you  tolerably  well,  the  longer  you  live  the  more  clearly 
you  will  feel  that,  on  the  whole,  life  is  a  disappointment,  nay,  a  cheat. 

If  two  men  who  were  friends  in  their  youth  meet  again  when  they  are 


ON  THE  SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  WORLD.     7 

old,  after  being  separated  for  a  life-time,  the  chief  feeling  they  will  have 
at  the  sight  of  each  other  will  be  one  of  complete  disappointment  at  life 
as  a  whole  ;  because  their  thoughts  will  be  carried  back  to  that  earlier 
time  when  life  seemed  so  fair  as  it  lay  spread  out  before  them  in  the  rosy 
light  of  dawn,  promised  so  much — and  then  performed  so  little.  This 
feeling  will  so  completely  predominate  over  every  other  that  they  will  not 
even  consider  it  necessary  to  give  it  words  ;  but  on  either  side  it  will  be 
silently  assumed,  and  form  the  ground- work  of  all  they  have  to  talk 
about. 

He  who  lives  to  see  two  or  three  generations  is  like  a  man  who  sits 
some  time  in  the  conjurer's  booth  at  a  fair,  and  witnesses  the  performance 
twice  or  thrice  in  succession.  The  tricks  were  meant  to  be  seen  only 
once  ;  and  when  they  are  no  longer  a  novelty  and  cease  to  deceive,  their 
effect  is  gone. 

While  no  man  is  much  to  be  envied  for  his  lot,  there  are  countless 
numbers  whose  fate  is  to  be  deplored. 

Life  is  a  task  to  be  done.  It  is  a  fine  thing  to  say  defunctus  est ;  it 
means  that  the  man  has  done  his  task. 

If  children  were  brought  into  the  world  by  an  act  of  pure  reason  alone, 
would  the  human  race  continue  to  exist  ?  Would  not  a  man  rather  have 
so  much  sympathy  with  the  coming  generation  as  to  spare  it  the  burden 
of  existence  ?  or  at  any  rate  not  take  it  upon  himself  to  impose  that  bur- 
den upon  it  in  cold  blood. 

I  shall  be  told,  I  suppose,  that  my  philosophy  is  comfortless — because 
I  speak  the  truth ;  and  people  prefer  to  be  assured  that  everything  the 
Lord  has  made  is  good.  Go  to  the  priests,  then,  and  leave  philosophers 
in  peace  !  At  any  rate,  do  not  ask  us  to  accommodate  our  doctrines  to  the 
lessons  you  have  been  taught.  That  is  what  those  rascals  of  sham  phi- 
losophers will  do  for  you.  Ask  them  for  any  doctrine  you  please,  and 
you  will  get  it.  Your  University  professors  are  bound  te  preach  optim- 
ism ;  and  it  is  an  easy  and  agreeable  task  to  upset  their  theories. 

I  have  reminded  the  reader  that  every  state  of  welfare,  every  feeling  of 
satisfaction,  is  negative  in  its  character ;  that  is  to  say,  it  consists  in  free- 
dom from  pain,  which  is  the  positive  element  of  existence.  It  follows, 
therefore,  that  the  happiness  of  any  given  life  is  to  be  measured,  not  by  its 
joys  and  pleasures,  but  by  the  extent  to  which  it  has  been  free  from  suf- 
fering— from  positive  evil.  If  this  is  the  true  standpoint,  the  lower  ani- 
mals appear  to  enjoy  a  happier  destiny  than  man.  Let  us  examine  the 
matter  a  little  more  closely. 

However  varied  the  forms  that  human  happiness  and  misery  may  take, 
leading  a  man  to  seek  the  one  and  shun  the  other,  the  material  basis  of  it 
all  is  bodily  pleasure  or  bodily  pain.  This  basis  is  very  restricted  :  it  is 
simply  health,  food,  protection  from  wet  and  cold,  the  satisfaction  of  the 
sexual  instinct ;  or  else  the  absence  of  these  things.  Consequently,  as  far 
as  real  physical  pleasure  is  concerned,  the  man  is  not  better  off  than  the 


8  STUDIES  AY  PESSIMISM. 

brute,  except  in  so  far  as  the  higher  possibilities  of  his  nervous  system 
make  him  more  sensitive  to  every  kind  of  pleasure,  but  also,  it  must  be 
remembered,  to  every  kind  of  pain.  But  then  compared  with  the  brute, 
how  much  stronger  are  the  passions  aroused  in  him  !  what  an  immeasur- 
able difference  there  is  in  the  depth  and  vehemence  of  his  emotions  ! — 
and  yet,  in  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other,  all  to  produce  the  same  result  in 
the  end  :  namely,  health,  food,  clothing,  and  so  on. 

The  chief  source  of  all  this  passion  is  that  thought  for  what  is  absent 
and  future,  which,  with  man,  exercises  such  a  powerful  influence  upon  all 
he  does.  It  is  this  that  is  the  real  origin  of  his  cares,  his  hopes,  his  fears 
— emotions  which  affect  him  much  more  deeply  than  could  ever  be  the 
case  with  those  present  joys  and  sufferings  to  which  the  brute  is  confined. 
In  his  powers  of  reflection,  memory  and  foresight,  man  possesses,  as  it 
were,  a  machine  for  condensing  and  storing  up  his  pleasures  and  his  sor- 
rows. But  the  brute  has  nothing  of  the  kind  ;  whenever  it  is  in  pain,  it  is 
as  though  it  were  suffering  for  the  first  time,  even  though  the  same  thing 
should  have  previously  happened  to  it  times  out  of  number.  It  has  no 
power  of  summing  up  its  feelings.  Hence  its  careless  and  placid  temper: 
how  much  it  is  to  be  envied  !  But  in  man  reflection  comes  in,  with  all 
the  emotions  to  which  it  gives  rise  ;  and  taking  up  the  same  elements  of 
pleasure  and  pain  which  are  common  to  him  and  the  brute,  it  develops 
his  susceptibility  to  happiness  and  misery  to  such  a  degree  that,  at  one  mo- 
ment the  man  is  brought  in  an  instant  to  a  state  of  delight  that  may  even 
prove  fatal,  at  another  to  the  depths  of  despair  and  suicide. 

If  we  carry  our  analysis  a  step  farther,  we  shall  find  that,  in  order  to 
increase  his  pleasures,  man  has  intentionally  added  to  the  number  and 
pressure  of  his  needs,  which  in  their  original  state  were  not  much  more 
difficult  to  satisfy  than  those  of  the  brute.  Hence  luxury  in  all  its  forms  ; 
delicate  food,  the  use  of  tobacco  and  opium,  spirituous  liquors,  fine 
clothes  and  the  thousand  and  one  things  that  he  considers  necessary  to 
his  existence. 

And  above  and  beyond  all  this,  there  is  a  separate  and  peculiar  source 
of  pleasure,  and  consequently  of  pain,  which  man  has  established  for 
himself,  also  as  the  result  of  using  his  powers  of  reflection  ;  and  this  oc- 
cupies him  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  value,  nay,  almos^  more  than  all 
his  other  interests  put  together — I  mean  ambition  and  the  feeling  of  honor 
and  shame ;  in  plain  words,  what  he  thinks  about  the  opinion  other  peo- 
ple have  of  him.  Taking  a  thousand  forms,  often  very  strange  ones,  this 
becomes  the  goal  of  almost  all  the  efforts  he  makes  that  are  not  rooted  in 
physical  pleasure  or  pain.  It  is  true  that  besides  the  sources  of  pleasure 
which  he  has  in  common  with  the  brute,  man  has  the  pleasures  of  the 
mind  as  well.  These  admit  of  many  gradations,  from  the  most  innocent 
trifling  or  the  merest  talk  up  to  the  highest  intellectual  achievements  ;  but 
there  is  the  accompanying  boredom  to  be  set  against  them  on  the  side  of 
suffering.  Boredom  is  a  form  of  suffering  unknown  to  brutes,  at  any  rate 


ON  THE  SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  WORLD.     9 

in  their  natural  state  ;  it  is  only  the  very  cleverest  of  them  who  show  faint 
traces  of  it  when  they  are  domesticated  ;  whereas  in  the  case  of  man  it 
has  become  a  downright  scourge.  The  crowd  of  miserable  wretches 
whose  one  aim  in  life  is  to  fill  their  purses  but  never  to  put  anything  into 
their  heads,  offers  a  singular  instance  of  this  torment  of  boredom.  Their 
wealth  becomes  a  punishment  by  delivering  them  up  to  the  misery  of 
having  nothing  to  do  ;  for,  to  escape  it,  they  will  rush  about  in  all  direc- 
tions, travelling  here,  there  and  everywhere.  No  sooner  do  they  arrive  in 
a  place  than  they  are  anxious  to  know  what  amusements  it  affords  ;  just 
as  though  they  were  beggars  asking  where  they  could  receive  a  dole  !  Of 
a  truth,  need  and  boredom  are  the  two  poles  of  human  life.  Finally,  I 
may  mention  that  as  regards  the  sexual  relation,  man  is  committed  to  a 
peculiar  arrangement  which  drives  him  obstinately  to  choose  one  person. 
This  feeling  grows,  now  and  then,  into  a  more  or  less  passionate  love,1 
which  is  the  source  of  little  pleasure  and  much  suffering. 

It  is,  however,  a  wonderful  thing  that  the  mere  addition  of  thought 
should  serve  to  raise  such  a  vast  and  lofty  structure  of  human  happiness 
and  misery  ;  resting,  too,  on  the  same  narrow  basis  of  joy  and  sorrow  as 
man  holds  in  common  with  the  brute,  and  exposing  him  to  such  violent 
emotions,  to  so  many  storms  of  passion,  so  much  convulsion  of  feeling, 
that  what  he  has  suffered  stands  written  and  may  be  read  in  the  lines  on 
his  face.  And  yet,  when  all  is  told,  he  has  been  struggling  ultimately  for 
the  very  same  things  as  the  brute  has  attained,  and  with  an  incomparably 
smaller  expenditure  of  passion  and  pain. 

But  all  this  contributes  to  increase  the  measure  of  suffering  in  human 
life  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  pleasures;  and  the  pains  of  life  are  made 
much  worse  for  man  by  the  fact  that  death  is  something  very  real  to  him. 
The  brute  flies  from  death  instinctively  without  really  knowing  what  it  is, 
and  therefore  without  ever  contemplating  it  in  the  way  natural  to  a  man, 
who  has  this  prospect  always  before  his  eyes.  So  that  even  if  only  a  few 
brutes  die  a  natural  death,  and  most  of  them  live  only  just  long  enough 
to  transmit  their  species,  and  then,  if  not  earlier,  become  the  prey  of 
some  other  animal, — whilst  man,  on  the  other  hand,  manages  to  make 
so-called  natural  death  the  rule,  to  which,  however,  there  are  a  good 
many  exceptions, — the  advantage  is  on  the  side  of  the  brute,  for  the 
reason  stated  above.  But  the  fact  is  that  man  attains  the  natural  term  of 
years  just  as  seldom  as  the  brute  ;  because  the  unnatural  way  in  which  he 
lives,  and  the  strain  of  work  and  emotion,  lead  to  a  degeneration  of  the 
race  ;  and  so  his  goal  is  not  often  reached. 

The  brute  is  much  more  content  with  mere  existence  than  man  ;  the 
plant  is  wholly  so;  and  man  finds  satisfaction  in  it  just  in  proportion  as 
he  is  dull  and  obtuse.  Accordingly,  the  life  of  the  brute  carries  less  of 
sorrow  with  it,  but  also  less  of  joy,  when  compared  with  the  life  of  man; 

1  I  have  treated  this  subject  at  length  in  a  special  chapter  of  the  secoud  volume  of  my 
chief  work. 


io  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

and  while  this  may  be  traced,  on  the  one  side,  to  freedom  from  the 
torment  of  care  and  anxiety,  it  is  also  due  to  the  fact  that  hope,  in  any 
real  sense,  is  unknown  to  the  brute.  It  is  thus  deprived  of  any  share  in 
that  which  gives  us  the  most  and  the  best  of  our  joys  and  pleasures,  the 
mental  anticipation  of  a  happy  -/uture,  and  the  inspiriting  play  of 
phantasy,  both  of  which  we  owe  to  our_power  of  imagination.  If  the 
brute  is  free  from  care,  it  is  also,  in  this  sense,  without  hope;  in  either 
case  because  its  consciousness  is  limited  to  the  present  moment,  to  what 
it  can  actually  see  before  it.  The  brute  is  an  embodiment  of  present  im- 
pulses, and  hence  what  elements  of  fear  and  hope  exist  in  its  nature — 
and  they  do  not  go  very  far — arise  only  in  relation  to  objects  that  lie  be- 
fore it  and  within  reach  of  those  impulses  :  whereas  a  man's  range  of 
vision  embraces  the  whole  of  his  life,  and  extends  far  into  the  past  and 
the  future. 

Following  upon  this,  there  is  one  respect  in  which  brutes  show  real 
wisdom  when  compared  with  us — I  mean,  their  quiet,  placid,  enjoyment 
of  the  present  moment.  The  tranquillity  of  mind  which  this  seems  to  give 
them  often  puts  us  to  shame  for  the  many  times  we  allow  our  thoughts 
and  our  cares  to  make  us  restless  and  discontented.  And,  in  fact,  those 
pleasures  of  hope  and  anticipation  which  I  have  been  mentioning  are  not 
to  be  had  for  nothing.  The  delight  which  a  man  has  in  hoping  for  and 
looking  forward  to  some  special  satisfaction  is  a  part  of  the  real  pleasure 
attaching  to  it  enjoyed  in  advance.  This  is  afterwards  deducted;  for  the 
more  we  look  forward  to  anything,  the  less  satisfaction  we  find  in  it 
when  it  comes.  But  the  brute's  enjoyment  is  not  anticipated  and  there- 
fore suffers  no  deduction;  so  that  the  actual  pleasure  of  the  moment 
comes  to  it  whole  and  unimpaired.  In  the  same  way,  too,  evil  presses 
upon  the  brute  only  with  its  own  intrinsic  weight;  whereas  with  us  the 
fear  of  its  coming  often  makes  its  burden  ten  times  more  grievous. 

It  is  just  this  characteristic  way  in  which  the  brute  gives  itself  up  en- 
tirely to  the  present  moment  that  contributes  so  much  to  the  delight  we 
take  in  our  domestic  pets.  They  are  the  present  moment  personified, 
and  in  some  respects  they  make  us  feel  the  value  of  every  hour  that  is 
free  from  trouble  and  annoyance,  which  we,  with  our  thoughts  and  pre- 
occupations, mostly  disregard.  But  man,  that  selfish  and  heartless  crea- 
ture, misuses  this  quality  of  the  brute  to  be  more  content  than  we  are 
with  mere  existence,  and  often  works  it  to  such  an  extent  that  he  allows 
the  brute  absolutely  nothing  more  than  mere,  bare  life.  The  bird  which 
was  made  so  that  it  might  rove  over  half  the  world,  he  shuts  up  into  the 
space  of  a  cubic  foot,  there  to  die  a  slow  death  in  longing  and  crying  for 
freedom;  for  in  a  cage  it  does  not  sing  for  the  pleasure  of  it.  And  when 
I  see  how  man  misuses  the  dog,  his  best  friend;  how  he  ties  up  this  in- 
telligent animal  with  a  chain,  I  feel  the  deepest  sympathy  with  the  brute 
and  burning  indignation  against  its  master. 

We  shall  see  later  that  by  taking  a  very  high  standpoint  it  is  possible 


ON  THE  SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  WORLD.     n 

to  justify  the  sufferings  of  mankind.  But  this  justification  cannot  apply 
to  animals,  whose  sufferings,  while  in  a  great  measure  brought  about  by 
men,  are  often  considerable  even  apart  from  their  agency. '  And  so  we 
are  forced  to  ask,  Why  and  for  what  purpose  does  all  this  torment  and 
agony  exist  ?  There  is  nothing  here  to  give  the  will  pause;  it  is  not  free 
to  deny  itself  and  so  obtain  redemption.  There  is  only  one  consideration 
that  may  serve  to  explain  the  sufferings  of  animals.  It  is  this:  that  the 
will  to  live,  which  underlies  the  whole  world  of  phenomena,  must  in 
their  case  satisfy  its  cravings  by  feeding  upon  itself.  This  it  does  by 
forming  a  gradation  of  phenomena,  every  one  of  which  exists  at  the  ex- 
pense of  another.  I  have  shown,  however,  that  the  capacity  for  suffer- 
ing is  less  in  animals  than  in  man.  Any  further  explanation  that  may  be 
given  of  their  fate  will  be  in  the  nature  of  hypothesis,  if  not  actually 
mythical  in  its  character;  and  I  may  leave  the  reader  to  speculate  upon 
the  matter  for  himself. 

»  Brahma  is  said  to  have  produced  the  world  by  a  kind  of  fall  or  mis- 
take; and  in  order  to  atone  for  his  folly,  he  is  bound  to  remain  in  it  him- 
self until  he  works  out  his  redemption.  As  an  account  of  the  origin  of 
things  that  is  admirable  !  According  to  the  doctrines  of  Buddhism,  the 
world  came  into  being  as  the  result  of  some  inexplicable  disturbance  in 
the  heavenly  calm  of  Nirvana,  that  blessed  state  obtained  by  expiation, 
which  had  endured  so  long  a  time — the  change  taking  place  by  a  kind  of 
fatality.  This  explanation  must  be  understood  as  having  at  bottom  some 
moral  bearing;  although  it  is  illustrated  by  an  exactly  parallel  theory  in 
the  domain  of  physical  science,  which  places  the  origin  of  the  sun  in  a 
primitive  streak  of  mist,  formed  one  knows  not  how.  Subsequently,  by 
a  series  of  moral  errors,  the  world  became  gradually  worse  and  worse — 
true  of  the  physical  orders  as  well — until  it  assumed  the  dismal  aspect  it 
wears  to-day.  Excellent  !  The  Greeks  looked  upon  the  world  and  the 
gods  as  the  work  of  an  inscrutable  necessity.  A  passable  explanation: 
we  may  be  content  with  it  until  we  can  get  a  better.  Again,  Ormuzdand 
Ahriman  are  rival  powers,  continually  at  war.  That  is  not  bad.  But 
that  a  God  like  Jehovah  should  have  created  this  world  of  misery  and 
woe,  out  of  pure  caprice,  and  because  he  enjoyed  doing  it,  and  should 
then  have  clapped  his  hands  in  praise  of  his  own  work,  and  declared 
everything  to  be  very  good — that  will  not  do  at  all  !  In  its  explanation 
of  the  origin  of  the  world,  Judaism  is  inferior  to  any  other  form  of  relig- 
ious doctrine  professed  by  a  civilised  nation;  and  it  is  quite  in  keeping 
with  this  that  it  is  the  only  one  which  presents  no  trace  whatever  of  any 
belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul.2 

Even  though  Leibnitz' contention,  that  this  is  the  best  of  all  possible 
worlds,  were  correct,  that  would  not  justify  God  in  having  created  it. 

'Cf.  Welt  ah  Wille  und  Vorstellung,  vol.  ii.  p.  404. 
2  See  Parerga,  vol.  i.  pp.  136  et  seq. 


12  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

For  he  is  the  Creator  not  of  the  world  only,  but  of  possibility  itself,  and, 
therefore,  he  ought  to  have  so  ordered  possibility  as  that  it  would  admit 
of  something  better. 

There  are  two  things  which  make  it  impossible  to  believe  that  this 
world  is  the  successful  work  of  an  all-wise,  all-good,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  all-powerful  Being;  firstly,  the  misery  which  abounds  in  it  every- 
where; and  secondly,  the  obvious  imperfection  of  its  highest  product, 
man,  who  is  a  burlesque  of  what  he  should  be.  These  things  cannot  be 
reconciled  with  any  such  belief.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  just  the  facts 
which  support  what  I  have  been  saying;  they  are  our  authority  for  view- 
ing the  world  as  the  outcome  of  our  own  misdeeds,  and  therefore,  as  some- 
thing that  had  better  not  have  been.  Whilst,  under  the  former  hy- 
pothesis, they  amount  to  a  bitter  accusation  against  the  Creator,  and  sup- 
ply material  for  sarcasm;  under  the  latter  they  form  an  indictment  against 
our  own  nature, rour  own  will,  and  teach  us  a  lesson  of  humility.  They 
lead  us  to  see  that,  like  the  children  of  a  libertine,  we  come  into  the  world 
with  the  burden  of  sin  upon  us;  and  that  it  is  only  through  having  con- 
tinually to  atone  for  this  sin  that  our  existence  is  so  miserable,  and  that 
its  end  is  death. 

There  is  nothing  more  certain  that  the  general  truth  that  it  is  the  griev- 
ous sin  of  the  world  which  has  produced  the  grievous  suffering  of  the  world. 
I  am  not  referring  here  to  the  physical  connection  between  these  two 
things  lying  in  the  realm  of  experience;  my  meaning  is  metaphysical.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  sole  thing  that  reconciles  me  to  the  Old  Testament  is  the 
story  of  the  Fall.  In  my  eyes,  it  is  the  only  metaphysical  truth  in  that 
book,  even  though  it  appears  in  the  form  of  an  allegory.  There  seems 
to  me  no  better  explanation  of  our  existence  than  that  it  is  the  result  of 
some  false  step,  some  sin  of  which  we  are  paying  the  penalty.  I  can- 
not refrain  from  recommending  the  thoughtful  reader  a  popular,  but,  at 
the  same  time,  profound  treatise  on  this  subject  by  Claudius1  which  ex- 
hibits the  essentially  pessimistic  spirit  of  Christianity.  It  is  entitled: 
Cursed  is  the  ground  for  thy  sake. 

Between  the  ethics  of  the  Greeks  and  the  ethics  of  the  Hindoos,  there 
is  a  glaring  contrast.  In  the  one  case  (with  the  exception,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, of  Plato),  the  object  of  ethics  is  to  enable  a  man  to  lead  a  happy 
life;  in  the  other,  it  is  to  free  and  redeem  him  from  life  altogether — as  is 
directly  stated  in  the  very  first  words  of  the  Sankhya  Karika. 

Allied  with  this  is  the  contrast  between  the  Greek  and  the  Christian 
idea  of  death.  It  is  strikingly  presented  in  a  visible  form  on  a  fine  antique 
sarcophagus  in  the  gallery  at  Florence,  which  exhibits,  in  relief,  the  whole 
series  of  ceremonies  attending  a  wedding  in  ancient  times,  from  the  for- 

«  Translator's  Note.  Matthias  Claudius  (1740-1815),  a  popular  poet,  and  friend  of 
Klopstock,  Herder  and  Lessing.  He  edited  the  Wandsbecker  Bote,  in  the  fourth  part  of 
which  appeared  the  treatise  mentioned  above.  He  generally  wrote  under  the  pseudonym 
oSAsmus,  and  Schopenhauer  often  refers  to  him  by  this  name. 


ON  THE  SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  WORLD.     13 

mal  offer  to  the  evening  when  Hymen's  torch  lights  the  happy  couple 
home.  Compare  with  that  the  Christian  coffin,  draped  in  mournful  black 
and  surmounted  with  a  crucifix  !  How  much  significance  there  is  in  these 
two  ways  of  finding  comfort  in  death.  They  are  opposed  to  each  other,  but 
each  is  right.  The  one  points  to  the  affirmation  of  the  will  to  live,  which 
remains  sure  of  life  for  all  time,  however  rapidly  its  forms  may  change. 
The  other,  in  the  symbol  of  suffering  and  death,  points  to  the  denial  of  the 
will  to  live,  to  redemption  from  this  world,  the  domain  of  death  and  devil. 
And  in  the  question  between  the  affirmation  and  the  denial  of  the  will  to 
live,  Christianity  is  in  the  last  resort  right. 

The  contrast  which  the  New  Testament  presents  when  compared  with 
the  old,  according  to  the  ecclesiastical  view  of  the  matter,  is  just  that 
existing  between  my  ethical  system  and  the  moral  philosophy  of  Europe. 
The  Old  Testament  represents  man  as  under  the  dominion  of  Law,  in 
which,  however,  there  is  no  redemption.  The  New  Testament  declares 
Law  to  have  failed,  frees  man  from  its  dominion,1  and  in  its  stead 
preaches  the  kingdom  of  grace,  to  be  won  by  faith,  love  of  neighbor  and 
entire  sacrifice  of  self.  This  is  the  path  of  redemption  from  the  evil  of 
the  world.  The  spirit  of  the  New  Testament  is  undoubtedly  asceticism, 
however  your  protestants  and  rationalists  may  twist  it  to  suit  their  purpose. 
Asceticism  is  the  denial  of  the  will  to  live;  and  the  transition  from  the 
Old  Testament  to  the  New,  from  the  dominion  of  Law  to  that  of  Faith, 
from  justification  by  works  to  redemption  through  the  Mediator,  from  the 
domain  of  sin  and  death  to  eternal  life  in  Christ,  means,  when  taken  in  its 
real  sense,  the  transition  from  the  merely  moral  virtues  to  the  denial  of 
the  will  to  live.  My  philosophy  shows  the  metaphysical  foundation  of 
justice  and  the  love  of  mankind,  and  points  to  the  goal  to  which  these 
virtues  necessarily  lead,  if  they  are  practised  in  perfection.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  candid  in  confessing  that  a  man  must  turn  his  back  upon  the 
world,  and  that  the  denial  of  the  will  to  live  is  the  way  of  redemption. 
It  is  therefore  really  at  one  with  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament,  whilst 
all  other  systems  are  couched  in  the  spirit  of  the  Old;  that  is  to  say,  theo- 
retically as  well  as  practically,  their  result  is  Judaism — mere  despotic 
theism.  In  this  sense,  then,  my  doctrine  might|be  called  the  only  true 
Christian  philosophy — however  paradoxical  a  statement  this  may  seem  to 
people  who  take  superficial  views  instead  of  penetrating  to  the  heart  of 
the  matter. 

If  you  want  a  safe  compass  to  guide  you  through  life,  and  to  banish  all 
doubt  as  to  the  right  way  of  looking  at  it,  you  cannot  do  better  than 
accustom  yourself  to  regard  this  world  as  a  penitentiary,  a  sort  of  penal 
colony,  or  ipyatirrfpiov,  as  the  earliest  philosophers  called  it.2  Amongst 
the  Christian  Fathers,  Origen,  with  praiseworthy  courage,  took  this  view,3 

1  Cf.  Romans  vii.;  Galatians  ii.,  Hi. 

*  Cf.  Clem.  Alex.     Strom.  L.  iii.,  c.  3,  p.  399. 

3  Augustine  de  civilate  Dei.,  L.  xi.  c.  23. 


j4  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

which  is  further  justified  by  certain  objective  theories  of  life.  I  refer,  not 
to  my  own  philosophy  alone,  but  to  the  wisdom  of  all  ages,  as  expressed 
in  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism,  and  in  the  sayings  of  Greek  philosophers 
like  Empedocles  and  Pythagoras;  as  also  by  Cicero,  in  his  remark  that 
the  wise  men  of  old  used  to  teach  that  we  come  into  this  world  to  pay 
the  penalty  of  crime  committed  in  another  state  of  existence — a  doctrine 
which  formed  part  of  the  initiation  into  the  mysteries. '  And  Vanini — 
whom  his  contemporaries  burned,  finding  that  an  easier  task  than  to  con- 
fute him — puts  the  same  thing  in  a  very  forcible  way.  Man,  he  says,  if 
so  full  of  every  kind  of  misery  that,  were  it  not  repugnant  to  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, I  should  venture  to  affirm  that  if  evil  spirits  exist  at  all,  they  have 
passed  into  human  form  and  are  now  atoning  for  their  crimes. 2  And  true 
Christianity — using  the  word  in  its  right  sense — also  regards  our  existence 
as  the  consequence  of  sin  and  error. 

If  you  accustom  yourself  to  this  view  of  life  you  will  regulate  your  ex- 
pectations accordingly,  and  cease  to  look  upon  all  its  disagreeable  inci- 
dents, great  and  small,  its  sufferings,  its  worries,  its  misery,  as  anything 
unusual  or  irregular;  nay,  you  will  find  that  everything  is  as  it  should  be, 
in  a  world  where  each  of  us  pays  thetpenalty  of  existence  in  his  own  pecu- 
liar way.  Amongst  the  evils  of  a  penal  colony  is  the  society  of  those 
who  form  it;  and  if  the  reader  is  worthy  of  better  company,  he  will  need 
no  words  from  me  to  remind  him  of  what  he  has  to  put  up  with  at 
present.  If  he  has  a  soul  above  the  common,  or  if  he  is  a  man  of  genius, 
he  will  occasionally  feel  like  some  noble  prisoner  of  state,  condemned  to 
work  in  the  galleys  with  common  criminals;  and  he  will  follow  his 
example  and  try  to  isolate  himself. 

In  general,  however,  it  should  be  said  that  this  view  of  life  will  enable 
us  to  contemplate  the  so-called  imperfections  of  the  great  majority  of  men, 
their  moral  and  intellectual  deficiencies  and  the  resulting  base  type  of 
countenance,  without  any  surprise,  to  say  nothing  of  indignation;  for  we 
shall  never  cease  to  reflect  where  we  are,  and  that  the  men  about  us  are 
being  conceived  and  born  in  sin,  and  living  to  atone  for  it.  That  is  what 
Christianity  means  in  speaking  of  the  sinful  nature  of  man. 

Pardon's  the  word  to  all/3  Whatever  folly  men  commit,  be  their  short- 
comings or  their  vices  what  they  may,  let  us  exercise  forbearance  ;  re- 
membering that  when  these  faults  appear  in  others,  it  is  our  follies  and 
vices  that  we  behold.  They  are  the  shortcomings  of  humanity,  to  which 
we  belong ;  whose  faults,  one  and  all,  we  share  ;  yes,  even  those  very 
faults  at  which  we  now  wax  so  indignant,  merely  because  they  have  not 
yet  appeared  in  ourselves.  They  are  faults  that  do  not  lie  on  the  surface. 
But  they  exist  down  there  in  the  depths  of  our  nature ;  and  should  any- 
thing call  them  forth,  they  will  come  and  show  themselves,  just  as  we 

1  Cf.  Fragmenta  de  philosophia. 

J  De  admirandis  natura;  arcanis;  dial  L.  p.  35. 

3  "Cymbeline,"  Act  v.  Sc.  5. 


ON  THE  SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  WORLD.     15 

now  see  them  in  others.  One  man,  it  is  true,  may  have  faults  that  are 
absent  in  his  fellow  ;  and  it  is  undeniable  that  the  sum  total  of  bad 
qualities  is  in  some  cases  very  large  ;  for  the  difference  of  individuality 
between  man  and  man  passes  all  measure. 

In  fact,  the  conviction  that  the  world  and  man  is  something  that  had 
better  not  have  been,  is  of  a  kind  to  fill  us  with  indulgence  towards  one 
another.  Nay,  from  this  point  of  view,  we  might  well  consider  the 
proper  form  of  address  to  be,  not  Monsieur,  Sir,  mien  Herr,  but  my  fellow- 
sufferer,  Sod  malorum,  compagnon  de  miseres !  This  may  perhaps  sound 
strange,  but  it  is  in  keeping  with  the  facts  :  it  puts  others  in  a  right 
light ;  and  it  reminds  us  of  that  which  is  after  all  the  most  necessary 
thing  in  life — the  tolerance,  patience,  regard,  and  love  of  neighbor,  of 
which  everyone  stands  in  need,  and  which,  therefore,  every  man  owes  to 
his  fellow. 


THE  VANITY  OF  EXISTENCE. 


vanity  finds  expression  in  the  whole  way  in  which  things  exist ; 
A  in  the  infinite  nature  of  Time  and  Space,  as  opposed  to  the  finite 
nature  of  the  individual  in  both  ;  in  the  ever-passing  present  moment  as 
the  only  mode  of  actual  existence  ;  in  the  interdependence  and  relativity 
of  all  things  ;  in  continual  Becoming  without  ever  Being ;  in  constant 
wishing  and  never  being  satisfied  ;  in  the  long  battle  which  forms  the  his- 
tory of  life,  where  every  effort  is  checked  by  difficulties,  and  stopped  un- 
til they  are  overcome.  Time  is  that  in  which  all  things  pass  away  ;  it  is 
merely  the  form  under  which  the  will  to  live — the  thing-in-itself  and 
therefore  imperishable — has  revealed  to  it  that  its  efforts  are  in  vain  :  it  is 
that  agent  by  which  at  every  moment  all  things  in  our  hands  become  as 
nothing,  and  loose  any  real  value  they  possess. 

That  which  has  been  exists  no  more  ;  it  exists  as  little  as  that  which  has 
never  been.  But  of  every  thing  that  exists  you  must  say,  in  the  next  mo- 
ment, that  it  has  been.  Hence  something  of  great  importance  now  past 
is  inferior  to  something  of  little  importance  now  present,  in  that  the  lat- 
ter is  a  reality,  and  related  to  the  former  as  something  to  nothing. 

A  man  finds  himself,  to  his  great  astonishment  suddenly  existing,  after 
thousands  and  thousands  of  years  of  non-existence  ;  he  lives  for  a  little 
while  ;  and  then,  again  comes  an  equally  long  period  when  he  must  ex- 
ist no  more.  The  heart  rebels  against  this,  and  feels  that  it  cannot  be 
true.  The  crudest  intellect  cannot  speculate  on  such  a  subject  without 
having  a  presentiment  that  Time  is  something  ideal  in  its  nature.  This 
ideality  of  Time  and  Space  is  the  key  to  every  true  system  of  metaphysics  ; 
because  it  provides  for  quite  another  order  of  things  than  is  to  be  met 
with  in  the  domain  of  nature.  This  is  why  Kant  is  so  great. 

Of  every  event  in  our  life  we  can  say  only  for  one  moment  that  it  is; 
for  ever  after,  that  it  was.  Every  evening  we  are  poorer  by  a  day.  It 
might,  perhaps,  make  us  mad  to  see  how  rapidily  our  short  span  of  time 
ebbs  away;  if  it  were  not  that  in  the  furthest  depth  of  our  being  we  are 
secretly  conscious  of  our  share  in  the  inexhaustible  spring  of  eternity,  so 
that  we  can  always  hope  to  find  life  in  it  again. 

Considerations  of  the  kind  touched  on  above  might,  indeed,  lead  us  to 

16 


THE  VANITY  OF -EXISTENCE.  17 

embrace  the  belief  that  the  greatest  wisdom  is  to  make  the  enjoyment  of 
the  present  the  supreme  object  of  life  ;  because  that  is  the  only  reality, 
all  else  being  merely  the  play  of  thought.  On  the  other  hand,  such  a 
course  might  just  as  well  be  called  the  greatest  folly  :  for  that  which 
in  the  next  moment  exists  no  more,  and  vanishes  utterly,  like  a  dream, 
can  never  be  worth  a  serious  effort. 

The  whole  foundation  on  which  our  existence  rests  is  the  present — the 
ever-fleeting  present.  It  lies,  then,  in  the  very  nature  of  our  existence  to 
take  the  form  of  constant  motion,  and  to  offer  no  possibility  of  our  ever 
attaining  the  rest  for  which  we  are  always  striving.  We  are  like  a  man 
running  down-hill,  who  cannot  keep  on  his  legs  unless  he  runs  on,  and 
will  inevitably  fall  if  he  stops  ;  or,  again,  like  a  pole  balanced  on  the  tip 
of  one's  finger  ;  or  like  a  planet,  which  would  fall  into  its  sun  the  mo- 
ment it  ceased  to  hurry  forward  on  its  way.  Unrest  is  the  mark  of  exist- 
ence. 

In  a  world  where  all  is  unstable,  and  nought  can  endure,  but  is  swept 
(inwards  at  once  in  the  hurrying  whirlpool  of  change;  where  a  man,  if  he 
is  to  keep  erect  at  all,  must  always  be  advancing  and  moving,  like  an 
acrobat  on  a  rope — in  such  a  world,  happiness  is  inconceivable.  How 
can  it  dwell  where,  as  Plato  says,  continual  Becoming  and  never  Being  is 
the  sole  form  of  existence?  In  the  first  place,  a  man  never  is  happy,  but 
spends  his  whole  life  in  striving  after  something  which  he  thinks  will  make 
him  so ;  he  seldom  attains  his  goal,  and  when  he  does,  it  is  only  to  be 
disappointed  ;  he  is  mostly  shipwrecked  in  the  end,  and  comes  into  har- 
bor with  masts  and  rigging  gone.  And  then,  it  is  all  one  whether  he  has 
been  happy  or  miserable  ;  for  his  life  was  never  anything  more  than  a 
present  moment  always  vanishing  ;  and  now  it  is  over. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  a  wonderful  thing  that,  in  the  world  of  human 
beings  as  in  that  of  animals  in  general,  this  manifold  restless  motion  is 
produced  and  kept  up  by  the  agency  of  two  simple  impulses — hunger  and 
the  sexual  instinct ;  aided  a  little,  perhaps,  by  the  influence  of  boredom, 
but  by  nothing  else  ;  and  that,  in  the  theatre  of  life,  these  suffice  to  form 
the  primum  mobile  of  how  complicated  a  machinery,  setting  in  motion  how 
strange  and  varied  a  scene  ! 

On  looking  a  little  closer,  we  find  that  inorganic  matter  presents  a  con- 
stant conflict  between  chemical  forces,  which  eventually  works  dissolu- 
tion ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  that  organic  life  is  impossible  without  con- 
tinual change  of  matter,  and  cannot  exist  if  it  does  not  receive  perpetual 
help  from  without.  This  is  the  realm  of  finality ;  and  its  opposite  would 
be  an  infinite  existence,  exposed  to  no  attack  from  without,  and  needing 
nothing  to  support  it;  del  aodavrooS  ov,  the  realm  of  eternal  peace  ;  OVTE 
yiyvonevov  ovrs  dttokkv^vov,  some  timeless,  changeless  state,  one  and 
undiversified  ;  the  negative  knowledge  of  which  forms  the  dominant  note 
of  the  Platonic  philosophy.  It  is  to  some  such  state  as  this  that  the  de- 
nial of  the  will  to  live  opens  up  the  way. 


1 8  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

The  scenes  of  our  life  are  like  pictures  done  in  rough  mosaic.  Looked 
at  close,  they  produce  no  effect.  There  is  nothing  beautiful  to  be  found 
in  them,  unless  you  stand  some  distance  off.  So,  to  gain  anything  we 
have  longed  for  is  only  to  discover  how  vain  and  empty  it  is ;  and  even 
though  we  are  always  living  in  expectation  of  better  things,  at  the  same 
time  we  often  repent  and  long  to  have  the  past  back  again.  We  look 
upon  the  present  as  something  to  be  put  up  with  while  it  lasts,  and  serv- 
ing only  as  the  way  towards  our  goal.  Hence  most  people,  if  they  glance 
back  when  they  come  to  the  end  of  life,  will  find  that  all  along  they  have 
been  living  ad  interim :  they  will  be  surprised  to  find  that  the  very  thing 
they  disregarded  and  let  slip  by  unenjoyed,  was  just  the  life  in  the  expec- 
tation of  which  they  passed  all  their  time.  Of  how  many  a  man  may  it 
not  be  said  that  hope  made  a  fool  of  him  until  he  danced  into  the  arms 
of  death  ! 

Then  again,  how  insatiable  a  creature  is  man  !  Every  satisfaction  he 
attains  lays  the  seeds  of  some  new  desire,  so  that  there  is  no  end  to  the 
wishes  of  each  individual  will.  And  why  is  this  ?  The  real  reason  is 
simply  that,  taken  in  itself,  Will  is  the  lord  of  all  worlds  :  everything 
belongs  to  it,  and  therefore  no  one  single  thing  can  ever  give  it  satisfac- 
tion, but  only  the  whole,  which  is  endless.  For  all  that,  it  must  rouse 
our  sympathy  to  think  how  very  little  the  Will,  this  lord  of  the  world, 
really  gets  when  it  takes  the  form  of  an  individual ;  usually  only  just 
enough  to  keep  the  body  together.  This  is  why  man  is  so  very  mis- 
erable. 

Life  presents  itself  chiefly  as  a  task — the  task,  I  mean,  of  subsisting 
at  all,  gagner  sa  vie.  If  this  is  accomplished,  life  is  a  burden,  and  then 
there  comes  the  second  task  of  doing  something  with  that  which  has 
been  won — of  warding  off  boredom,  which,  like  a  bird  of  prey,  hovers 
•over  us,  ready  to  fall  wherever  it  sees  a  life  secure  from  need.  The  first 
task  is  to  win  something ;  the  second,  to  banish  the  feeling  that  it  has 
been  won  ;  otherwise  it  is  a  burden. 

Human  life  must  be  some  kind  of  mistake.  The  truth  of  this  will  be 
sufficiently  obvious  if  we  only  remember  that  man  is  a  compound  of 
needs  and  necessities  hard  to  satisfy  ;  and  that  even  when  they  are  satis- 
fied, all  he  obtains  is  a  state  of  painlessness,  where  nothing  remains  to 
him  but  abandonment  to  boredom.  This  is  direct  proof  that  exist- 
ence has  no  real  value  in  itself;  for  what  is  boredom  but  the  feeling  of 
the  emptiness  of  life  ?  If  life — the  craving  for  which  is  the  very  essence 
of  our  being — were  possessed  of  any  positive  intrinsic  value,  there  would  be 
no  such  thing  as  boredom  at  all  :  mere  existence  would  satisfy  us  in  itself, 
and  we  should  want  for  nothing.  But  as  it  is,  we  take  no  delight  in 
existence  except  when  we  are  struggling  for  something ;  and  then  dis- 
tance and  difficulties  to  be  overcome  make  our  goal  look  as  though  it 
would  satisfy  us — an  illusion  which  vanishes  when  we  reach  it ;  or  else 
when  we  are  occupied  with  some  purely  intellectual  interest — where  in 


THE  VANITY  OF  EXISTENCE.  19 

reality  we  have  stepped  forth  from  life  to  look  upon  it  from  the  outside, 
much  after  the  manner  of  spectators  at  a  play.  And  even  sensual  pleas- 
ure itself  means  nothing  but  a  struggle  and  aspiration,  ceasing  the 
moment  its  aim  is  attained.  Whenever  we  are  not  occupied  in  one  of 
these  ways,  but  cast  upon  existence  itself,  its  vain  and  worthless  nature  is 
brought  home  to  us  ;  and  this  is  what  we  mean  by  boredom.  The  han- 
kering after  what  is  strange  and  uncommon — an  innate  and  ineradicable 
tendency  of  human  nature — shows  how  glad  we  are  at  any  interruption  of 
that  natural  course  of  affairs  which  is  so  very  tedious. 

That  this  most  perfect  manifestation  of  the  will  to  live,  the  human 
organism,  with  the  cunning  and  complex  working  of  its  machinery,  must 
fall  to  dust  and  yield  up  itself  and  all  its  strivings  to  extinction — this  is 
the  nai've  way  in  which  Nature,  who  is  always  so  true  and  sincere  in  what 
she  says,  proclaims  the  whole  struggle  of  this  will  as  in  its  very  essence 
barren  and  unprofitable.  Were  it  of  any  value  in  itself,  anything  uncon- 
ditioned and  absolute,  it  could  not  thus  end  in  mere  nothing. 

'  If  we  turn  from  contemplating  the  world  as  a  whole,  and,  in  particu- 
lar, the  generations  of  men  as  they  live  their  little  hour  of  mock-existence 
and  then  are  swept  away  in  rapid  succession  ;  if  we  turn  from  this,  and 
look  at  life  in  its  small  details,  as  presented,  say,  in  a  comedy,  how  ridic- 
ulous it  all  seems  !  It  is  like  a  drop  of  water  seen  through  a  microscope, 
a  single  drop  teeming  with  infusoria  ;  or  a  speck  of  cheese  full  of  mites 
invisible  to  the  naked  eye.  How  we  laugh  as  they  bustle  about  so 
eagerly,  and  struggle  with  one  another  in  so  tiny  a  space !  And  whether 
here,  or  in  the  little  span  of  human  life  this  terrible  activity  produces  a 
comic  effect. 

It  is  only  in  the  microscope  that  our  life  looks  so  big.  It  is  an  in- 
divisible point,  drawn  out  and  magnified  by  the  powerful  lenses  of  Time 
and  Space. 


ON    SUICIDE. 


AS  far  as  I  know,  none  but  the  votaries  of  monotheistic,  that  is  to  say 
Jewish,  religions,  look  upon  suicide  as  a  crime.  This  is  all  the 
more  striking,  inasmuch  as  neither  in  the  Old  nor  in  the  New  Testament 
is  there  to  be  found  any  prohibition  or  positive  disapproval  of  it ;  so  that 
religious  teachers  are  forced  to  base  their  condemnation  of  suicide  on  phil- 
osophical grounds  of  their  own  invention.  These  are  so  very  bad  that 
writers  of  this  kind  endeavor  to  make  up  for  the  weakness  of  their  argu- 
ments by  the  strong  terms  in  which  they  express  their  abhorrence  of  the 
practice  ;  in  other  words,  they  declaim  against  it  They  tell  us  that  sui- 
cide is  the  greatest  piece  of  cowardice ;  that  only  a  madman  could  be 
guilty  of  it ;  and  other  insipidities  of  the  same  kind  ;  or  else  they  make 
the  nonsensical  remark  that  suicide  is  wrong ;  when  it  is  quite  obvious 
that  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  to  which  every  man  has  a  more  unassail- 
able title  than  to  his  own  life  and  person. 

Suicide,  as  I  have  said,  is  actually  accounted  a  crime ;  and  a  crime 
which,  especially  under  the  vulgar  bigotry  that  prevails  in  England,  is 
followed  by  an  ignominious  burial  and  the  seizure  of  the  man's  property ; 
and  for  that  reason,  in  a  case  of  suicide,  the  jury  almost  always  bring  in 
a  verdict  of  insanity.  Now  let  the  reader's  own  moral  feelings  decide  as 
to  whether  or  not  suicide  is  a  criminal  act.  Think  of  the  impression  that 
would  be  made  upon  you  by  the  news  that  some  one  you  know  had  com- 
mitted the  crime,  say,  of  murder  or  theft,  or  been  guilty  of  some  act  of 
cruelty  or  deception  ;  and  compare  it  with  your  feelings  when  you  hear 
that  he  has  met  a  voluntary  death.  While  in  the  one  case  a  lively  sense 
of  indignation  and  extreme  resentment  will  be  aroused,  and  you  will  call 
loudly  for  punishment  or  revenge,  in  the  other  you  will  be  moved  to  grief 
and  sympathy  ;  and  mingled  with  your  thoughts  will  be  admiration  for 
his  courage,  rather  than  the  moral  disapproval  which  follows  upon  a 
wicked  action.  Who  has  not  had  acquaintances,  friends,  relations,  who 
of  their  own  free  will  have  left  this  world ;  and  are  these  to  be  thought  of 


ON  SUICIDE.  21 

with  horror  as  criminals  ?  Most  emphatically  No  !  I  am  rather  of  opin- 
ion that  the  clergy  should  be  challenged  to  explain  what  right  they  have 
to  go  into  the  pulpit,  or  take  up  their  pens,  and  stamp  as  a  crime  an  ac- 
tion which  many  men  whom  we  hold  in  affection  and  honor  have  com- 
mitted ;  and  to  refuse  an  honorable  burial  to  those  who  relinquish  this 
world  voluntarily.  They  have  no  Biblical  authority  to  boast  of,  as  justi- 
fying their  condemnation  of  suicide ;  nay,  not  even  any  philosophical 
arguments  that  will  hold  water  ;  and  it  must  be  understood  that  it  is 
arguments  we  want,  and  that  we  will  not  be  put  off  with  mere  phrases  or 
words  of  abuse.  If  the  criminal  law  forbids  suicide,  that  is  not  an  argu- 
ment valid  in  the  Church  :  and  besides,  the  prohibition  is  ridiculous  ;  for 
what  penalty  can  frighten  a  man  who  is  not  afraid  of  death  itself?  If  the 
law  punishes  people  for  trying  to  commit  suicide,  it  is  punishing  the  want 
of  skill  that  makes  the  attempt  a  failure. 

The  ancients,  moreover,  were  very  far  from  regarding  the  matter  in  that 
light.  Pliny  says:  Life  is  not  so  desirable  a  thing  as  to  be  protracted  at  any 
cost.  Whoever  you  are,  you  are  sure  to  die,  even  though  your  life  has  been 
full  of  abomination  and  crime.  The  chief  of  all  remedies  for  a  troubled  mind 
is  the  feeling  that  among  the  blessings  which  Nature  gives  to  man,  there  is 
none  greater  than  an  opportune  death;  and  the  best  of  it  is  that  every  one  can 
avail  himself  of  it.*  And  elsewhere  the  same  writer  declares:  Not  even  to 
God  are  all  things  possible;  for  he  could  not  compass  his  own  death,  if  he 
willed  to  die,  and  yet  in  all  the  miseries  of  our  earthly  life,  this  is  the  best  of 
his  gifts  to  man.2  Nay,  in  Massilia  and  on  the  isle  of  Ceos,  the  man  who 
could  give  valid  reasons  for  relinquishing  his  life,  was  handed  the  cup  of 
hemlock  by  the  magistrate;  and  that,  too,  in  public.3  And  in  ancient 
times,  how  many  heroes  and  wise  men  died  a  voluntary  death.  Aris- 
totle,4 it  is  true,  declared  suicide  to  be  an  offense  against  the  State, 
although  not  against  the  person  ;  but  in  Stobaeus'  exposition  of  the  Peri- 
patetic philosophy  there  is  the  following  remark:  The  good  man  should  flee 
life  when  his  misfortunes  become  too  great ;  the  bad  man,  also,  when  he  is,  too 
prosperous.  And  similarly;  So  he  will  marry  and  beget  children  and  take 
part  in  the  affairs  of  the  State,  and,  generally,  practise  virtue  and  continue  to 
live;  and  then,  again,  if  need  be,  and  at  any  time  necessity  compels  him,  he 
will  depart  to  his  place  of  refuge  in  the  tomb.*  And  we  find  that  the  Stoics 
actually  praised  suicide  as  a  noble  and  heroic  action,  as  hundreds  of  pas- 
sages show;  above  all  in  the  works  of  Seneca,  who  expresses  the  strongest 
approval  of  it.  As  is  well  known,  the  Hindoos  look-upon  suicide  as  a 
religious  act,  especially  when  it  takes  the  form  of  self-immolation  by 
widows;  but  also  when  it  consists  in  casting  oneself  under  the  wheels  of 

1  Hist.  Nat.  Lib.  xxviii.,  I.  *Loc.  cit.  Lib.  ii.c.  7. 

3  Valerius  Maximus;  hist.  Lib.  ii.,  c.  6,  §  7  et  8.     Heraclides  Ponticus;  fragmenta  de 
Tebus  publicis,  ix.     Aeliani  varise  historic,  iii.,  37.     Strabo;  Lib.  x.,  c.  5,  6. 

4  Eth.  Nichom.,  v.  15.  6  Stobseus.   Eel.  Eth.  ii.,  c.  7,  pp.  286,  312. 


22  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

the  chariot  of  the  god  at  Juggernaut,  or  being  eaten  by  crocodiles  in  the 
Ganges,  or  being  drowned  in  the  holy  tanks  in  the  temples,  and  so  on. 
The  same  thing  occurs  on  the  stage — that  mirror  of  life.  For  example, 
in  L'Orphelin  de  la  Chine, '  a  celebrated  Chinese  play,  almost  all  the  noble 
characters  end  by  suicide;  without  the  slightest  hint  anywhere,  or  any 
impression  being  produced  on  the  spectator,  that  they  are  committing  a 
crime.  And  in  our  own  theatre  it  is  much  the  same — Palmira,  for 
instance,  in  Mahomet,  or  Mortimer  in  Maria  Stuart,  Othello,  Countess 
Terzky.  *  Is  Hamlet's  monologue  ths  meditation  of  a  criminal  ?  He  mere- 
ly declares  that  if  we  had  any  certainty  of  being  annihilated  by  it,  death 
would  be  infinitely  preferable  to  the  world  as  it  is.  But  there  lies  the  rub/ 

The  reasons  advanced  against  suicide  by  the  clergy  of  monotheistic, 
that  is  to  say,  Jewish  religions,  and  by  those  philosophers  who  adapt 
themselves  thereto,  are  weak  sophisms  which  can  easily  be  refuted. 3  The 
most  thorough-going  refutation  of  them  is  given  by  Hume  in  his  Essay 
on  Suicide.  This  did  not  appear  until  after  his  death,  when  it  was  im- 
mediately suppressed,  owing  to  the  scandalous  bigotry  and  outrageous 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  that  prevailed  in  England  ;  and  hence  only  a  very 
few  copies  of  it  were  sold  under  cover  of  secrecy  and  at  a  high  price. 
This  and  another  treatise  by  that  great  man  have  come  to  us  from  Basle, 
and  we  may  be  thankful  for  the  reprint. 4  It  is  a  great  disgrace  to  the 
English  nation  that  a  purely  philosophical  treatise,  which,  proceeding 
from  one  of  the  first  thinkers  and  writers  in  England,  aimed  at  refuting 
the  current  arguments  against  suicide  by  the  light  of  cold  reason,  should 
be  forced  to  sneak  about  in  that  country,  as  though  it  were  some  rascally 
production,  until  at  last  it  found  refuge  on  the  Continent.  At  the  same 
time  it  shows  what  a  good  conscience  the  Church  has  in  such  matters. 

In  my  chief  work  I  have  explained  the  only  valid  reason  existing 
against  suicide  on  the  score  of  morality.  It  is  this  :  that  suicide  thwarts 
the  attainment  of  the  highest  moral  aim  by  the  fact,  that,  for  a  real  re- 
lease from  this  world  of  misery,  it  substitutes  one  that  is  merely  appar- 
ent.* But  from  a  mistake  to  a  crime  is  a  far  cry;  and  it  is  as  a  crime 
that  the  clergy  of  Christendom  wish  us  to  regard  suicide. 

The  inmost  kernel  of  Christianity  is  the  truth  that  suffering — the  Crosr 


i  Traduit  par  St.  Julien,  1834. 

*  Translator's  Note.     Palmira:  a  female  slave  in  Goethe's  play  of  Mahomet.     Morti- 
mer: a   would-be    lover   and  rescuer  of  Mary  in  Schiller's  Maria  Stuart.     Countess 
Terzky:  a  leading  character  in  Schiller's  Wallenst tin's  Tod. 

3  See  my  Treatise  on  the  Foundation  of  Morals •,  §  5. 

*  Essays  on  Suicide  and  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  by  the  late  David  Hume,  Basle, 
1 799,  sold  by  James  Decker. 

^Translator's  Note.  Schopenhauer  refers  to  Die  Welt  als  Wille  und  Vorstellung, 
vol.  i.,  §  69,  where  the  reader  may  find  the  same  argument  stated  at  somewhat  greater 
length.  According  to  Schopenhauer,  moral  freedom — the  highest  ethical  aim— is  to 
be  obtained  only  by  a  denial  of  the  will  to  live.  Far  from  being  a  denial,  suicide  is  an 


ON  SUICIDE.  23 

— is  the  real  end  and  object  of  life.  Hence  Christianity  condemns  sui- 
cide as  thwarting  this  end  ;  whilst  the  ancient  world,  taking  a  lower  point 
of  view,  held  it  in  approval,  nay,  in  honor.  But  if  that  is  to  be  ac- 
counted a  valid  reason  against  suicide,  it  involves  the  recognition  of  as- 
ceticism ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  valid  only  from  a  much  higher  ethical  stand- 
point than  has  ever  been  adopted  by  moral  philosophers  in  Europe.  If 
we  abandon  that  high  standpoint,  there  is  no  tenable  reason  left,  on  the 
score  of  morality,  for  condemning  'suicide.  The  extraordinary  energy 
and  zeal  with  which  the  clergy  of  monotheistic  religions  attack  suicide  is 
not  supported  either  by  any  passages  in  the  Bible  or  by  any  considerations 
of  weight ;  so  that  it  looks  as  though  they  must  have  some  secret  reason 
for  their  contention.  May  it  not  be  this — that  the  voluntary  surrender 
of  life  is  a  bad  compliment  for  him  who  said  that  all  things  were  very  good? 
If  this  is  so,  it  offers  another  instance  of  the  crass  optimism  of  these  re- 
ligions,— denouncing  suicide  to  escape  being  denounced  by  it. 

It  will  generally  be  found  that,  as  soon  as  the  terrors  of  life  reach  the 
point  at  which  they  outweigh  the  terrors  of  death,  a  man  will  put  an  end 
to  his  life.  But  the  terrors  of  death  offer  considerable  resistance;  they 
stand  like  a  sentinel  at  the  gate  leading  out  of  this  world.  Perhaps  there 
is  no  man  alive  who  would  not  have  already  put  an  end  to  his  life,  if  this 
end  had  been  of  a  purely  negative  character,  a  sudden  stoppage  of  exist- 
ence. There  is  something  positive  about  it;  it  is  the  destruction  of  the 
body;  and  a  man  shrinks  from  that,  because  his  body  is  the  manifestation 
of  the  will  to  live. 

However,  the  struggle  with  that  sentinel  is,  as  a  rule,  not  so  hard  as  it 
may  seem  from  a  long  way  off,  mainly  in  consequence  of  the  antagonism 
between  the  ills  of  the  body  and  the  ills  of  the  mind.  If  we  are  in  great 
bodily  pain,  or  the  pain  lasts  a  long  time,  we  become  indifferent  to  other 
troubles;  all  we  think  about  is  to  get  well.  In  the  same  way  great  men- 
•  tal  suffering  makes  us  insensible  to  bodily  pain;  we  despise  it;  nay,  if  it 
should  outweigh  the  other,  it  distracts  our  thoughts,  and  we  welcome  it 
as  a  pause  in  mental  suffering.  It  is  this  feeling  that  makes  suicide  easy; 
for  the  bodily  pain  that  accompanies  it  loses  all  significance  in  the  eyes  of 
one  who  is  tortured  by  an  excess  of  mental  suffering.  This  is  especially 
evident  in  the  case  of  those  who  are  driven  to  suicide  by  some  purely  mor- 
bid and  exaggerated  ill-humor.  No  special  effort  to  overcome  their  feel- 
ings is  necessary,  nor  do  such  people  require  to  be  worked  up  in  order  to 
take  the  step;  but  as  soon  as  the  keeper  into  whose  charge  they  are  given 
leaves  them  for  a  couple  of  minutes,  they  quickly  bring  their  life  to  an  end. 

When,  in  some  dreadful  and  ghastly  dream,  we  reach  the  moment  of 

emphatic  assertion  of  this  will.  For  it  is  in  fleeing  from  the  pleasures,  not  from  the  suf- 
ferings of  life,  that  this  denial  consists  When  a  man  destroys  his  existence  as  an  indi- 
vidual, he  is  not  by  any  means  destroying  his  will  to  live.  On  the  contrary,  he  would 
like  to  live  if  he  could  do  so  with  satisfaction  to  himself  ;  if  he  could  assert  his  will  against 
the  power  of  circumstance  ;  but  circumstance  is  too  strong  for  him. 


24  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

greatest  horror,  it  awakes  us;  thereby  banishing  all  the  hideous  shapes 
that  were  born  of  the  night.  And  life  is  a  dream:  when  the  moment  of 
greatest  horror  compels  us  to  break  it  off,  the  same  thing  happens. 

Suicide  may  also  be  regarded  as  an  experiment — a  question  which  man 
puts  to  Nature,  trying  to  force  her  to  an  answer.  The  question  is  this: 
What  change  will  death  produce  in  man's  existence  and  in  his  insight  in- 
to the  nature  of  things  ?  It  is  a  clumsy  experiment  to  make;  for  it  in- 
volves the  destruction  of  the  very  consciousness  which  puts  the  question 
and  waits  the  answer. 


IMMORTALITY-    A  DIALOGUE. 


THRASYMACHOS— PHILALETHES. 

Thrasymachos.  Tell  me  now,  in  one  word,  what  shall  I  be  after  my 
death  ?  And  mind  you  be  clear  and  precise. 

Philalethes.     All  and  nothing  ! 

Thrasymachos,  I  thought  so  !  I  gave  you  a  problem,  and  you  solve 
it  by  a  contradiction.  That's  a  very  stale  trick. 

Philalethes.  Yes,  but  you  raise  transcendental  questions,  and  you 
expect  me  to  answer  them  in  language  that  is  only  made  for  immanent 
knowledge.  It's  no  wonder  that  a  contradiction  ensues. 

Thrasymachos.  What  do  you  mean  by  transcendental  questions  and 
immanent  knowledge  ?  I've  heard  these  expressions  before,  of  course  ; 
they  are  not  new  to  me.  The  Professor  was  fond  of  using  them,  but 
only  as  predicates  of  the  Deity,  and  he  never  talked  of  anything  else  ; 
which  was  all  quite  right  and  proper.  He  argued  thus :  if  the  Deity  was 
in  the  world  itself,  he  was  immanent ;  if  he  was  somewhere  outside  it, 
he  was  transcendent.  Nothing  could  be  clearer  and  more  obvious  ! 
You  knew  where  you  were.  But  this  Kantian  rigmarole  won't  do  any 
more  :  it's  antiquated  and  no  longer  applicable  to  modern  ideas.  Why, 
we've  had  a  whole  row  of  eminent  men  in  the  metropolis  of  German 
learning — 

Philalethes  (aside).     German  humbug,  he  means. 

Thrasymachos.  The  mighty  Schleiermacher,  for  instance,  and  that 
gigantic  intellect,  Hegel  ;  and  at  this  time  of  day  we've  abandoned  that 
nonsense.  I  should  rather  say  we're  so  far  beyond  it  that  we  can't  put 

1  Translator's  Note.  The  word  immortality — UnsterbKckkeit—&x&  not  occur  in  the 
original  ;  nor  would  it,  in  its  usual  application,  find  a  place  in  Schopenhauer's  vocabu- 
lary. The  word  he  uses  is  Unzerstdrbarkeit— indestructibility.  But  I  have  preferred 
immortality,  because  that  word  is  commonly  associated  with  the  subject  touched  upon  in 
this  little  debate.  If  any  critic  doubts  the  wisdom  of  this  preference,  let  me  ask  him  to 
try  his  hand  at  a  short,  concise,  and,  at  the  same  time,  popularly  intelligible  rendering 
of  the  German  original,  which  runs  thus  :  Zur  Lehre  -von  der  UnzerstOrbarkeit  unseres 
viahren  We  sens  durch  den  Tod:  kleine  dialogische  SMussbelustigung. 

25 


26  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

up  with  it  any  more.     What's  the  use  of  it  then?     What  does  it  all 
mean  ? 

Philalethes.  Transcendental  knowledge  is  knowledge  which  passes  be- 
yond the  bounds  of  possible  experience,  and  strives  to  determine  the 
nature  of  things  as  they  are  in  themselves.  Immanent  knowledge,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  knowledge  which  confines  itself  entirely  within  those 
bounds  ;  so  that  it  cannot  apply  to  anything  but  actual  phenomena.  As 
far  as  you  are  an  individual,  death  will  be  the  end  of  you.  But  your 
individuality  is  not  your  true  and  inmost  being  :  it  is  only  the  outward 
manifestation  of  it.  It  is  not  the  thin g-in-its elf,  but  only  the  phenomenon 
presented  in  the  form  of  time ;  and  therefore  with  a  beginning  and  an 
end.  But  your  real  being  knows  neither  time  nor  beginning  nor  end, 
nor  yet  the  limits  of  any  given  individual.  It  is  everywhere  present  in 
every  individual  :  and  no  individual  can  exist  apart  from  it.  So  when 
death  comes,  on  the  one  hand  you  are  annihilated  as  an  individual  ;  on 
the  other,  you  are  and  remain  everything.  That  is  what  I  meant  when 
I  said  that  after  your  death  you  would  be  all  and  nothing.  It  is  difficult 
to  find  a  more  precise  answer  to  your  question  and  at  the  same  time  be 
brief.  The  answer  is  contradictory,  I  admit ;  but  it  is  so  simply  because 
your  life  is  in  time,  and  the  immortal  part  of  you  in  eternity.  You  may 
put  the  matter  thus.  Your  immortal  part  is  something  that  does  not  last 
in  time  and  yet  is  indestructible  ;  but  there  you  have  another  contradic- 
tion !  You  see  what  happens  by  trying  to  bring  the  transcendental  with- 
in the  limits  of  immanent  knowledge.  It  is  in  some  sort  doing  vio- 
lence to  the  latter  by  misusing  it  for  ends  it  was  never  meant  to  serve. 

Thrasymachos.  Look  here,  I  sha'n't  give  twopence  for  your  immor- 
tality unless  I'm  to  remain  an  individual. 

Philalethes.  Well,  perhaps  I  may  be  able  to  satisfy  you  on  this  point 
Suppose  I  guarantee  that  after  death  you  shall  remain  an  individual,  but 
only  on  condition  that  you  first  spend  three  months  of  complete  uncon- 
sciousness. 

Thrasymachos.     I  shall  have  no  objection  to  that 

Philalethes.  But  remember,  if  people  are  completely  unconscious, 
they  take  no  account  of  time.  So,  when  you  are  dead,  it's  all  the  same 
to  you  whether  three  months  pass  in  the  world  of  consciousness,  or  ten 
thousand  years.  In  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  it  is  simply  a  matter  of 
believing  what  is  told  you  when  you  awake.  So  far,  then,  you  can  afford 
to  be  indifferent  whether  it  is  three  months  or  ten  thousand  years  that 
pass  before  you  recover  your  individuality. 

Thrasymachos.     Yes,  if  it  comes  to  that,  I  suppose  you're  right. 

Philalethes.  And  if  by  chance,  after  those  ten  thousand  years  have 
gone  by,  no  one  ever  thinks  of  awaking  you,  I  fancy  it  would  be  no  great 
misfortune.  You  would  have  become  quite  accustomed  to  non-existence 
after  so  long  a  spell  of  it — following  upon  such  a  very  few  years  of  life. 
At  any  rate  you  may  be  sure  you  would  be  perfectly  ignorant  of  the  whole 


IMMORTALITY:   A  DIALOGUE.  27 

thing.  Further,  if  you  knew  that  the  mysterious  power  which  keeps  you 
in  your  present  state  of  life  had  never  once  ceased  in  those  ten  thousand 
years  to  bring  forth  other  phenomena  like  yourself,  and  to  endow  them 
with  life,  it  would  fully  console  you. 

Thrasymachos.  Indeed  !  So  you  think  you're  quietly  going  to  do  me 
out  of  my  individuality  with  all  this  fine  talk.  But  I'm  up  to  your  tricks. 
I  tell  you  I  won't  exist  unless  I  can  have  my  individuality.  I'm  not 
going  to  be  put  off  with  "  mysterious  powers,"  and  what  you  call  "phe- 
nomena." I  can't  do  without  my  individuality,  and  I  won't  give  it  up. 

Philalethes.  You  mean,  I  suppose,  that  your  individuality  is  such  a 
delightful  thing — so  splendid,  so  perfect,  and  beyond  compare — that  you 
can't  imagine  anything  better.  Aren't  you  ready  to  exchange  your  present 
state  for  one  which,  if  we  can  judge  by  what  is  told  us,  may  possibly  be 
superior  and  more  endurable? 

Thrasymachos.  Don't  you  see  that  my  individuality,  be  it  what  it  may, 
is  my  very  self?  To  me  it  is  the  most  important  thing  in  the  world, 

For  God  is  God  and  I  am  I. 

I  want  to  exist,  /,  /.  That's  the  main  thing.  I  don't  care  about  an 
existence  which  has  to  be  proved  to  be  mine,  before  I  can  believe  it. 

Philalethes.  Think  what  you're  doing  !  When  you  say  /,  /,  /want  to 
exist,  it  is  not  you  alone  that  says  this.  Everything  says  it,  absolutely 
everything  that  has  the  faintest  trace  of  consciousness.  It  follows,  then, 
that  this  desire  of  yours  is  just  the  part  of  you  that  is  not  individual—  the  part 
that  is  common  to  all  things  without  distinction.  It  is  the  cry,  not  of 
the  individual,  but  of  existence  itself;  it  is  the  intrinsic  element  in  every- 
thing that  exists,  nay,  it  is  the  cause  of  anything  existing  at  all.  This 
desire  craves  for,  and  so  is  satisfied  with,  nothing  less  than  existence  in 
general — not  any  definite  individual  existence.  No!  that  is  not  its  aim.  It 
seems  to  be  so  only  because  this  desire — this  Will — attains  consciousness 
only  in  the  individual,  and  therefore  looks  as  though  it  were  concerned 
with  nothing  but  the  individual.  There  lies  the  illusion — an  illusion,  it  is 
true,  in  which  the  individual  is  held  fast:  but  if  he  reflects,  he  can  break  the 
fetters  and  set  himself  free.  It  is  only  indirectly,  I  say,  that  the  individual 
has  this  violent  craving  for  existence.  It  is  the  Will  to  Live  which  is  the 
real  and  direct  aspirant — alike  and  identical  in  all  things.  Since,  then, 
existence  is  the  free  work,  nay,  the  mere  reflection  of  the  will,  where  exist- 
ence is,  there,  too,  must  be  will;  and  for  the  moment,  the  will  finds  its  satis- 
faction in  existence  itself;  so  far,  I  mean,  as  that  which  never  rests,  but 
presses  forward  eternally,  can  ever  find  any  satisfaction  at  all.  The  will  is 
careless  of  the  individual:  the  individual  is  not  its  business;  although,  as 
I  have  said,  this  seems  to  be  the  case,  because  the  individual  has  no  direct 
consciousness  of  will  except  in  himself.  The  effect  of  this  is  to  make  the 
individual  careful  to  maintain  his  own  existence;  and  if  this  were  not  so, 
there  would  be  no  surety  for  the  preservation  of  the  species.  From  all 


28  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

this  it  is  clear  that  individuality  is  not  a  form  of  perfection,  but  rather  of 
limitation;  and  so  to  be  freed  from  it  is  not  loss  but  gain.  Trouble 
yourself  no  more  about  the  matter.  Once  thoroughly  recognise  what  you 
are,  what  your  existence  really  is,  namely,  the  universal  will  to  live,  and 
the  whole  question  will  seem  to  you  childish  and  most  ridiculous  ! 

Thrasymachos.  You're  childish  yourself,  and  most  ridiculous,  like  all 
philosophers  !  and  if  a  man  of  my  age  lets  himself  in  for  a  quarter-of-an- 
hour's  talk  with  such  fools,  it  is  only  because  it  amuses  me  and  passes  the 
time.  I've  more  important  business  to  attend  to,  so  Good-bye. 


FURTHER   PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS. 


THERE  is  an  unconscious  propriety  in  the  way  in  which,  in  all 
European  languages,  the  word  person  is  commonly  used  to 
denote  a  human  being.  The  real  meaning  of  persona  is  a  mask,  such  as 
actors  were  accustomed  to  wear  on  the  ancient  stage;  and  it  is  quite  true 
that  no  one  shows  himself  as  he  is,  but  wears  his  mask  and  plays  his 
part.  Indeed,  the  whole  of  our  social  arrangements  may  be  likened  to  a 
perpetual  comedy;  and  this  is  why  a  man  who  is  worth  anything  finds 
society  so  insipid,  while  a  blockhead  is  quite  at  home  in  it. 

Reason  deserves  to  be  called  a  prophet;  for  in  showing  us  the  conse- 
quence and  effect  of  our  actions  in  the  present,  does  it  not  tell  us  what 
the  future  will  be  ?  This  is  precisely  why  reason  is  such  an  excellent 
power  of  restraint  in  moments  when  we  are  possessed  by  some  base 
passion,  some  fit  of  anger,  some  covetous  desire,  that  will  lead  us  to 
do  things  whereof  we  must  presently  repent. 

Hatred  comes  from  the  heart;  contempt  from  the  head;  and  neither 
feeling  is  quite  within  our  control.  For  we  cannot  alter  our  heart;  its 
bias  is  determined  by  motives;  and  our  head  deals  with  objective  facts, 
and  applies  to  them  rules  which  are  immutable.  Any  given  individual 
is  the  union  of  a  particular  heart  with  a  particular  head. 

Hatred  and  contempt  are  diametrically  opposed  and  mutually  exclu- 
sive. There  are  even  not  a  few  cases  where  hatred  of  a  person  is  rooted 
in  nothing  but  forced  esteem  for  his  qualities.  And  besides,  if  a  man 
sets  out  to  hate  all  the  miserable  creatures  he  meets,  he  will  not  have 
much  energy  left  for  anything  else;  whereas  he  can  despise  them,  one 
and  all,  with  the  greatest  ease.  True,  genuine  contempt  is  just  the 
reverse  of  true,  genuine  pride;  it  keeps  quite  quiet  and  gives  no  sign  of 
its  existence.  For  if  a  man  shows  that  he  despises  you,  he  signifies  at 
least  this  much  regard  for  you,  that  he  wants  to  let  you  know  how  little 
he  appreciates  you;  and  his  wish  is  dictated  by  hatred,  which  cannot 
exist  with  real  contempt.  On  the  contrary,  if  it  is  genuine,  it  is  simply 
the  conviction  that  the  object  of  it  is  a  man  of  no  value  at  all.  Con- 

29 


30  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

tempt  is  not  incompatible  with  indulgent  and  kindly  treatment,  and  for 
the  sake  of  one's  own  peace  and  safety,  this  should  not  be  omitted;  it 
will  prevent  irritation;  and  there  is  no  one  who  cannot  do  harm  if  he  is 
roused  to  it.  But  if  this  pure,  cold,  sincere  contempt  ever  shows  itself, 
it  will  be  met  with  the  most  truculent  hatred;  for  the  despised  person  is 
not  in  a  position  to  fight  contempt  with  its  own  weapons. 

Melancholy  is  a  very  different  thing  from  bad  humor,  and  of  the  two, 
it  is  not  nearly  so  far  removed  from  a  gay  and  happy  temperament. 
Melancholy  attracts,  while  bad  humor  repels. 

Hypochondria  is  a  species  of  torment  which  not  only  makes  us  un- 
reasonably cross  with  the  things  of  the  present ;  not  only  fills  us  with 
groundless  anxiety  on  the  score  of  future  misfortunes  entirely  of  our  own 
manufacture  ;  but  also  leads  to  unmerited  self-reproach  for  what  we  have 
done  in  the  past. 

Hypochondria  shows  itself  in  a  perpetual  hunting  after  things  that  vex 
and  annoy,  and  then  brooding  over  them.  The  cause  of  it  is  an  inward 
morbid  discontent,  often  co-existing  with  a  naturally  restless  temperament 
In  their  extreme  form,  this  discontent  and  this  unrest  lead  to  suicide. 

Any  incident,  however  trivial,  that  rouses  disagreeable  emotion,  leaves 
an  after-effect  in  our  mind,  which,  for  the  time  it  lasts,  prevents  our  tak- 
ing a  clear  objective  view  of  the  things  about  us,  and  tinges  all  our 
thoughts  ;  just  as  a  small  object  held  close  to  the  eye  limits  and  distorts 
our  field  of  vision. 

What  makes  people  hard-hearted  is  this,  that  each  man  has,  or  fancies 
he  has,  as  much  as  he  can  bear  in  his  own  troubles.  Hence  if  a  man 
suddenly  finds  himself  in  an  unusually  happy  position,  it  will  in  most 
cases  result  in  his  being  sympathetic  and  kind.  But  if  he  has  never  been 
in  any  other  than  a  happy  position,  or  this  becomes  his  permanent  state, 
the  effect  of  it  is  often  just  the  contrary  ;  it  so  far  removes  him  from  suf- 
fering that  he  is  incapable  of  feeling  any  more  sympathy  with  it.  So  it  is 
that  the  poor  often  show  themselves  more  ready  to  help  than  the  rich. 

At  times  it  seems  as  though  we  both  wanted  and  did  not  want  the 
same  thing,  and  felt  at  once  glad  and  sorry  about  it  For  instance,  if  on 
some  fixed  date  we  are  going  to  be  put  to  a  decisive  test  about  anything 
in  which  it  would  be  a  great  advantage  to  us  to  come  off  victorious,  we 
shall  be  anxious  for  it  to  take  place  at  once,  and  at  the  same  time  we 
shall  tremble  at  the  thuoght  of  its  approach.  And  if,  in  the  meantime, 
we  hear  that,  for  once  in  a  way,  the  date  has  been  postponed,  we  shall  ex- 
perience a  feeling  both  of  pleasure  and  of  annoyance  ;  for  the  news  is 


FUR  THER  PS  YCHOL  OGICA  L  OBSER  VA  TIONS.     3 1 

disappointing,  but  nevertheless  it  affords  us  momentary  relief.  It  is  just 
the  same  thing  if  we  are  expecting  some  important  letter  carrying  a  defi- 
nite decision,  and  it  fails  to  arrive. 

In  such  ca'ses  there  are  really  two  different  imotves  at  work  in  us  ;  the 
stronger  but  more  distant  of  the  two  being  the  desire  to  stand  the  test  and 
to  have  the  decision  given  in  our  favor ;  and  the  weaker,  which  touches 
us  more  nearly,  the  wish  to  be  left  for  the  present  in  peace  and  quiet,  and 
accordingly  in  further  enjoyment  of  the  advantage  which  at  any  rate  at- 
taches to  a  state  of  hopeful  uncertainty,  compared  with  the  possibility 
that  the  issue  may  be  unfavorable. 

In  my  head  there  is  a  permanent  opposition-party  ;  and  whenever  I 
take  any  step  or  come  to  any  decision — though  I  may  have  given  the 
matter  mature  consideration— it  afterwards  attacks  what  I  have  done, 
without,  however,  being  each  time  necessarily  in  the  right.  This  is,  I 
suppose,  only  a  form  of  rectification  on  the  part  of  the  spirit  of  scrutiny  ; 
but  it  often  reproaches  me  when  I  do  not  deserve  it.  The  same  thing, 
no  doubt,  happens  to  many  others  as  well ;  for  where  is  the  man  who 
can  help  thinking  that,  after  all,  it  were  better  not  to  have  done  some- 
thing that  he  did  with  great  deliberation  : — 

Quid  tarn  dextro  pede  condpis  ut  te 
Conatus  non  poeniteat  votiqus  peracti  ? 

Why  is  it  that  common  is  an  expression  of  contempt  ?  and  that  uncom- 
mon, extraordinary,  distinguished,  denote  approbation  ?  Why  is  every- 
thing that  is  common  contemptible  ? 

Common  in  its  original  meaning  denotes  that  which  is  peculiar  to  all 
men,  i.  e.,  shared  equally  by  the  whole  species,  and  therefore  an  inher- 
ent part  of  its  nature.  Accordingly,  if  an  individual  possesses  no  quali- 
ties beyond  those  which  attach  to  mankind  in  general,  he  is  a  common 
man.  Ordinary  is  a  much  milder  word,  and  refers  rather  to  intellectual 
character  ;  whereas  common  has  more  of  a  moral  application. 

What  value  can  a  creature  have  that  is  not  a  whit  different  from  mil- 
lions of  its  kind  ?  Millions,  do  I  say  ?  nay,  an  infinitude  of  creatures 
which,  century  after  century,  in  never-ending  flow,  Nature  sends  bub- 
bling up  from  her  inexhaustible  springs  ;  as  generous  with  them  as  the 
smith  with  the  useless  sparks  that  fly  around  his  anvil. 

It  is  obviously  quite  right  that  a  creature  which  has  no  qualities  except 
those  of  the  species,  should  have  to  confine  its  claim  to  an  existence  en- 
tirely within  the  limits  of  the  species,  and  live  a  life  conditioned  by  those 
limits. 

In  various  passages  of  my  works l  I  have  argued  that  whilst  a  lower  an- 
imal possesses  nothing  more  than  the  generic  character  of  its  species, 

1  Grundprobleme  der  Ethik.  p.  48;  Welt  als  Wille  und  Vorstellung  vol.  i.  p.  338. 


32  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

man  is  the  only  being  which  can  lay  claim  to  possess  an  individual  char- 
acter. But  in  most  men  this  individual  character  comes  to  very  little  in 
reality  ;  and  they  may  be  almost  all  ranged  under  certain  classes  :  ce 
sont  des  espices.  Their  thoughts  and  desires,  like  their  faces,  are  those  of 
the  species,  or,  at  any  rate,  those  of  the  class  to  which  they  belong  ;  and 
accordingly,  they  are  of  a  trivial,  every-day,  common  character,  and  ex- 
ist by  the  thousand.  You  can  usually  tell  beforehand  what  they  are 
likely  to  do  and  say.  They  have  no  special  stamp  or  mark  to  distinguish 
them ;  they  are  like  manufactured  goods,  all  of  a  piece. 

If,  then,  their  nature  is  merged  in  that  of  the  species,  how  shall  their 
existence  go  beyond  it  ?  The  curse  of  vulgarity  puts  men  on  a  par  with 
the  lower  animals,  by  allowing  them  none  but  a  generic  nature,  a  generic 
form  of  existence. 

Anything  that  is  high  or  great  or  noble  must  then,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  by  its  very  nature,  stand  alone  in  a  world  where  no  better 
expression  can  be  found  to  denote  what  is  base  and  contemptible  than 
that  which  I  have  mentioned  as  in  general  use,  namely,  common. 

Will,  as  the  thing-in-itself,  is  the  foundation  of  all  being  ;  it  is  part  and 
parcel  of  every  creature,  and  the  permanent  element  in  everything.  Will, 
then,  is  that  which  we  possess  in  common  with  all  men,  nay,  with  all  ani- 
mals and  even  with  lower  forms  of  existence  ;  and  in  so  far  we  are  akin  to 
everything — so  far,  that  is,  as  everything  is  filled  to  overflowing  with  will. 
On  the  other  hand,  that  which  places  one  being  over  another,  and  sets 
difference  between  man  and  man,  is  intellect  and  knowledge  ;  therefore 
in  every  manifestation  of  self,  we  should,  as  far  as  possible,  give  play  to 
the  intellect  one  ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the  will  is  the  common  part  of  us. 
Every  violent  exhibition  of  will  is  common  and  vulgar ;  in  other  words, 
it  reduces  us  to  the  level  of  the  species,  and  makes  us  a  mere  type  and 
example  of  it ;  in  that  it  is  just  the  character  of  the  species  that  we  are 
showing.  So  every  fit  of  anger  is  something  common — every  unrestrained 
display  of  joy,  of  hate,  or  fear — in  short,  every  form  of  emotion  ;  in  other 
words,  every  movement  of  the  will,  if  it  is  so  strong  as  decidedly  to  out- 
weigh the  intellectual  element  in  consciousness,  and  to  make  the  man  ap- 
pear as  a  being  that  wills  rather  than  knows. 

In  giving  way  to  emotion  of  this  violent  kind,  the  greatest  genius  puts 
himself  on  a  level  with  the  commonest  son  of  earth.  Contrarily,  if  a  man 
desires  to  be  absolutely  uncommon,  in  other  words,  great,  he  should 
never  allow  his  consciousness  to  be  taken  possession  of  and  dominated 
by  the  movement  of  his  will,  however  much  he  may  be  solicited  thereto. 
For  example,  he  must  be  able  to  observe  that  other  people  are  badly  dis- 
posed towards  him,  without  feeling  any  hatred  towards  them  himself; 
nay,  there  is  no  surer  sign  of  a  great  mind  than  that  it  refuses  to  notice 
annoying  and  insulting  expressions,  but  straightway  ascribes  them,  as  it 


FUR  THER  PS  YCHOL OGICA L  OBSER  VA  TIONS.     33 

ascribes  countless  other  mistakes,  to  the  defective  knowledge  of  the 
speaker,  and  so  merely  observes  without  feeling  them.  This  is  the  mean- 
ing of  that  remark  of  Gracian,  that  nothing  is  more  unworthy  of  a  man 
than  to  let  it  be  seen  that  he  is  one — el  mayor  desdoro  de  un  hombre  esdar 
muestras  de  que  es  hombre. 

And  even  in  the  drama,  which  is  the  peculiar  province  of  the  passions 
and  emotions,  it  is  easy  for  them  to  appear  common  and  vulgar.  And 
this  is  specially  observable  in  the  works  of  the  French  tragic  writers,  who 
set  no  other  aim  before  themselves  but  the  delineation  of  the  passions  ; 
and  by  indulging  at  one  moment  in  a  vaporous  kind  of  pathos  which 
makes  them  ridiculous,  at  another  in  epigrammatic  witticisms,  endeavor 
to  conceal  the  vulgarity  of  their  subject.  I  remember  seeing  the  cele- 
brated Mademoiselle  Rachel  as  Maria  Stuart ;  and  when  she  burst  out  in 
fury  against  Elizabeth — though  she  did  it  very  well — I  could  not  help 
thinking  of  a  washerwoman.  She  played  the  final  parting  in  such  a  way 
'as  to  deprive  it  of  all  true  tragic  feeling,  of  which,  indeed,  the  French 
have  no  notion  at  all.  The  same  part  was  incomparably  better  played  by 
the  Italian  Ristori  ;  and,  in  fact,  the  Italian  nature,  though  in  many  re- 
spects very  different  from  the  German,  shares  its  appreciation  for  what  is 
deep,  serious,  and  true  in  Art ;  herein  opposed  to  the  French,  which 
everywhere  betrays  that  it  possesses  none  of  this  feeling  whatever. 

The  noble,  in  other  words,  the  uncommon  element  in  the  drama — nay, 
what  is  sublime  in  it — is  not  reached  until  the  intellect  is  set  to  work,  as 
opposed  to  the  will ;  until  it  takes  a  free  flight  over  all  those  passionate 
movements  of  the  will,  and  makes  them  the  subject  of  its  contemplation. 
Shakespeare,  in  particular,  shows  that  this  is  his  general  method,  more 
especially  in  Hamlet.  And  only  when  intellect  rises  to  the  point  where 
the  vanity  of  all  effort  is  manifest,  and  the  will  proceeds  to  an  act  of  self- 
annulment,  is  the  drama  tragic  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word  :  it  is  then 
that  it  reaches  its  highest  aim  in  becoming  really  sublime. 

Every  man  takes  the  limits  of  his  own  field  of  vision  for  the  limits  of 
the  world.  This  is  an  an  error  of  the  intellect  as  inevitable  as  that  error 
of  the  eye  which  lets  us  fancy  that  on  the  horizon  heaven  and  earth  meet. 
This  explains  many  things,  and  among  them  the  fact  that  everyone 
measures  us  with  his  own  standard — generally  about  as  long  as  a  tailor's 
tape,  and  we  have  to  put  up  with  it:  as  also  that  no  one  will  allow  us  to 
be  taller  than  himself — a  supposition  which  is  once  for  all  taken  for 
granted. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  many  a  man  owes  his  good  fortune  in  life  solely 
to  the  circumstance  that  he  has  a  pleasant  way  of  smiling,  and  so  wins 
the  heart  in  his  favor. 

However,  the  heart  would  do  better  to  be  careful,  and  to  remember 
what  Hamlet  put  down  in  his  tablets — that  one  may  smile,  and  smile,  and  be 
a  villain. 


34  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM, 

Everything  that  is  really  fundamental  in  a  man,  and  therefore  genuine, 
works  as  such,  unconsciously ;  in  this  respect  like  the  power  of  nature. 
That  which  has  passed  through  the  domain  of  consciousness  is  thereby 
transformed  into  an  idea  or  picture  ;  and  so  if  it  comes  to  be  uttered,  it  is 
only  an  idea  or  picture  which  passes  from  one  person  to  another. 

Accordingly,  any  quality  of  mind  or  character  that  is  genuine  and 
lasting,  is  originally  unconscious  ;  and  it  is  only  when  unconsciously 
brought  into  play  that  it  makes  a  profound  impression.  If  any  like 
quality  is  consciously  exercised,  it  means  that  it  has  been  worked  up  ;  it 
becomes  intentional,  and  therefore  a  matter  of  affectation,  in  other  words, 
of  deception. 

If  a  man  does  a  thing  unconsciously,  it  costs  him  no  trouble  ;  but  if 
he  tries  to  do  it  by  taking  trouble,  he  fails.  This  applies  to  the  origin 
of  those  fundamental  ideas  which  form  the  pith  and  marrow  of  all  genuine 
work.  Only  that  which  is  innate  is  genuine  and  will  hold  water  ;  and 
every  man  who  wants  to  achieve  something,  whether  in  practical  life,  in 
literature,  or  in  art,  must/o//0z0  the  rules  without  knowing  them. 

Men  of  very  great  capacity  will,  as  a  rule,  find  the  company  of  very 
stupid  people  preferable  to  that  of  the  common  run  ;  for  the  same  reason 
that  the  tyrant  and  the  mob,  the  grandfather  and  the  grandchildren,  are 
natural  allies. 

That  line  of  Ovid's, 

Pronaque  cum  spectent  animalia  cetera  terram, 

can  be  applied  in  its  true  physical  sense  to  the  lower  animals  alone  ;  but 
in  a  metaphorical  and  spiritual  sense  it  is,  alas  !  true  of  nearly  all  men  as 
Wfcll.'  ,  All  -their  plans  and  projects  are  merged  in  the  desire  of  physical 
enjoyment,  physical  well-being.  They  may,  indeed,  have  personal  in- 
terests, often  embracing  a  very  varied  sphere  ;  but  still  these  latter  receive 
their  importance  entirely  from  the  relation  in  which  they  stand  to  the 
former.  This  is  not  only  proved  by  their  manner  of  life  and  the  things 
they  say,  but  it  even  shows  itself  in  the  way  they  look,  the  expression  of 
their  physiognomy,  their  gait  and  gesticulations.  Everything  about  them 
cries  out :  in  terram  prona  / 

It  is  not  to  them,  it  is  only  to  the  nobler  and  more  highly  endowed 
natures — men  who  really  think  and  look  about  them  in  the  world,  and 
form  exceptional  specimens  of  humanity — that  the  next  lines  are  ap- 
plicable : 

Os  homini  sublime  dedit  coelumque  tueri 
Jussit  et  erectos  ad  sidera  toller e  vultus. 

No  one  knows  what  capacities  for  doing  and  suffering  he  has  in  him- 


FUR  THER  PS YCHOLOGICA L  OBSER  VA  TIONS.    3 5 

self,  until  something  comes  to  rouse  them  to  activity  :  just  as  in  a  pond 
of  still  water,  lying  there  like  a  mirror,  there  is  no  sign  of  the  roar  and 
thunder  with  which  it  can  leap  from  the  precipice,  and  yet  remain  what  it 
is ;  or  again,  rise  high  in  the  air  as  a  fountain.  When  water  is  as  cold 
as  ice,  you  can  have  no  idea  of  the  latent  warmth  contained  in  it. 

Why  is  it  that,  in  spite  of  all  the  mirrors  in  the  world,  no  one  really 
knows  what  he  looks  like  ? 

A  man  may  call  to  mind  the  face  of  his  friend,  but  not  his  own.  Here, 
then,  is  an  initial  difficulty  in  the  way  of  applying  the  maxim,  Know 
thyself. 

This  is  partly,  no  doubt,  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  it  is  physi- 
cally impossible  for  a  man  to  see  himself  in  the  glass  except  with  face 
turned  straight  towards  it  and  perfectly  motionless  ;  where  the  expression 
of  the  eye,  which  counts  for  so  much,  and  really  gives  its  whole  character 
to  the  face,  is  to  a  great  extent  lost.  But  co-existing  with  this  physical 
impossibility,  there  seems  to  me  to  be  an  ethical  impossibility  of  an  ana- 
logous nature,  and  producing  the  same  effect.  A  man  cannot  look  upon 
his  own  reflection  as  though  the  person  presented  there  were  a  stranger  to 
him  ;  and  yet  this  is  necessary  if  he  is  to  take  an  objective  view.  In  the 
last  resort,  an  objective  view  means  a  deep-rooted  feeling  on  the  part  of 
the  individual,  as  a  moral  being,  that  that  which  he  is  contemplating  is 
not  himself ;  '  and  unless  he  can  take  this  point  of  view,  he  will  not  see 
things  in  a  really  true  light,  which  is  possible  only  if  he  is  alive  to  their 
actual  defects,  exactly  as  they  are.  Instead  of  that,  when  a  man  sees 
himself  in  the  glass,  something  out  of  his  own  egoistic  nature  whispers  to 
him  to  take  care  to  remember  that  it  is  no  stranger,  but  himself,  that  he  is 
looking  at;  and  this  operates  as  a  noli  me  tang  ere,  and  prevents  him  taking 
an  objective  view.  It  seems,  indeed,  as  if,  without  the  leaven  of  a  grain 
of  malice,  such  a  view  were  impossible. 

According  as  a  man's  mental  energy  is  exerted  or  relaxed,  will  life  ap- 
pear to  him  either  so  short,  and  petty,  and  fleeting,  that  nothing  can 
possibly  happen  over  which  it  is  worth  his  while  to  spend  emotion ;  that 
nothing  really  matters,  whether  it  is  pleasure  or  riches,  or  even  fame,  and 
that  in  whatever  way  a  man  may  have  failed,  he  cannot  have  lost  much — 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  life  will  seem  so  long,  so  important,  so  all  in  all, 
so  momentous  and  so  full  of  difficulty  that  we  have  to  plunge  into  it  with 
our  whole  soul  if  we  are  to  obtain  a  share  of  its  goods,  make  sure  of  its 
prizes,  and  carry  out  our  plans.  This  latter  is  the  immanent  and  common 
view  of  life  ;  it  is  what  Gracian  means  when  he  speaks  of  the  serious  way 
of  looking  at  things — tomar  mid  de  veras  el  vivir.  The  former  is  the 
transcendental  view,  which  is  well  expressed  in  Ovid's  non  est  tanti — it  is 
not  worth  so  much  trouble;  still  better,  however,  by  Plato's  remark  that  no- 
thing in  human  affairs  is  worth  any  great  anxiety — ovrs  n  rcSv 
1  Cf.  Grundprobleme  der  Ethik.  p.  275. 


36  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

a.e,iov  k6vl  neyd^yS  ditovd?J$.  This  condition  of  mind  is  due  to  the  in- 
tellect having  got  the  upper  hand  in  the  domain  of  consciousness,  where, 
freed  from  the  mere  service  of  the  will,  it  looks  upon  the  phenomena  of 
life  objectively,  and  so  cannot  fail  to  gain  a  clear  insight  into  its  vain  and 
futile  character.  But  in  the  other  condition  of  mind,  will  predominates  ; 
and  the  intellect  exists  only  to  light  it  on  its  way  to  the  attainment  of  its 
desires. 

A  ma»  is  great  or  small  according  as  he  leans  to  the  one  or  the  other 
of  these  views  of  life. 

People  of  very  brilliant  ability  think  little  of  admitting  their  errors  and 
weaknesses,  or  of  letting  others  see  them.  They  look  upon  them  as 
something  for  which  they  have  duly  paid  ;  and  instead  of  fancying  that 
these  weaknesses  are  a  disgrace  to  them,  they  consider  they  are  doing 
them  an  honor.  This  is  especially  ths  case  when  the  errors  are  of  the 
kind  that  hang  together  with  their  qualities — conditiones  sine  quibusnon — or, 
as  George  Sand  said,  les  defauts  de  ses  vertus. 

Contrarily,  there  are  people  of  good  character  and  irreproachable  in- 
tellectual capacity,  who,  far  from  admitting  the  few  little  weaknesses  they 
have,  conceal  them  with  care,  and  show  themselves  very  sensitive  to  any 
suggestion  of  their  existence  ;  and  this,  just  because  their  whole  merit 
consists  in  being  free  from  error  and  infirmity.  If  these  people  are  found 
to  have  done  anything  wrong,  their  reputation  immediately  suffers. 

With  people  of  only  moderate  ability,  modesty  is  mere  honesty  ;  but 
with  those  who  possess  great  talent,  it  is  hypocrisy.  Hence  it  is  just  as 
becoming  in  the  latter  to  make  no  secret  of  the  respect  they  bear  them- 
selves and  no  disguise  of  the  fact  that  they  are  conscious  of  unusual 
power,  as  it  is  in  the  former  to  be  modest.  Valerius  Maximus  gives  some 
very  neat  examples  of  this  in  his  chapter  on  self-confidence,  defiducia  sui. 

Not  to  go  to  the  theatre  is  like  making  one's  toilet  without  a  mirror. 
But  it  is  still  worse  to  take  a  decision  without  consulting  a  friend.  For 
a  man  may  have  the  most  excellent  judgment  in  all  other  matters,  and  yet 
go  wrong  in  those  which  concern  himself;  because  here  the  will  comes  in 
and  deranges  the  intellect  at  once.  Therefore  let  a  man  take  counsel  of  a 
friend.  A  doctor  can  cure  everyone  but  himself ;  if  he  falls  ill,  he  sends 
for  a  colleague. 

In  all  that  we  do,  we  wish  more  or  less,  to  come  to  the  end  ;  we  are 
impatient  to  finish  and  glad  to  be  done.  But  the  last  scene  of  all,  the 
general  end,  is  something  that,  as  a  rule,  we  wish  as  far  off  as  may  be. 

Every  parting  gives  a  forefaste  of  death  ;  every  coming  together  again 
a  foretaste  of  the  resurrection.  This  is  why  even  people  who  were  indif- 


FURTHER  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS.     37 

ferent   to  each  other,  rejoice  so  much  if  they  come   together  again  after 
twenty  or  thirty  years'  separation. 

Intellects  differ  from  one  another  in  a  very  real  and  fundamental  way  : 
but  no  comparison  can  well  be  made  by  merely  general  observations.  It 
is  necessary  to  come  close,  and  to  go  into  details  ;  for  the  difference  that 
exists  cannot  be  seen  from  afar  ;  and  it  is  not  easy  to  judge  by  outward 
appearances,  as  in  the  several  cases  of  education,  leisure  and  occupation. 
But  even  judging  by  these  alone,  it  must  be  admitted  that  many  a  man 
has  a  degree  of  existence  at  least  ten  times  as  high  as  another — in  other 
words,  exists  ten  times  as  much. 

I  am  not  speaking  here  of  savages  whose  life  is  often  only  one  degree 
above  that  of  the  apes  in  their  woods.  Consider,  for  instance,  a  porter  in 
Naples  or  Venice,  (in  the  north  of  Europe  solicitude  for  the  winter 
months  makes  people  more  thoughtful  and  therefore  reflective)  ;  look  at 
the  life  he  leads,  from  its  begining  to  its  end  : — driven  by  poverty  ;  living 
on  his  physical  strength ;  meeting  the  needs  of  every  day,  nay,  of  every 
hour,  by  hard  work,  great  effort,  constant  tumult,  want  in  all  its  forms, 
no  care  for  the  morrow ;  his  only  comfort,  rest  after  exhaustion  ;  contin- 
uous quarrelling  ;  not  a  moment  free  for  reflection  ;  such  sensual  delights 
as  a  mild  climate  and  only  just  sufficient  food  will  permit  of ;  and  then, 
finally,  as  the  metaphysical  element,  the  crass  superstition  of  his  church; 
the  whole  forming  a  manner  of  life  with  only  a  low  degree  of  conscious- 
ness, where  a  man  hustles,  or  rather  is  hustled,  through  his  existence. 
This  restless  and  confused  dream  forms  the  life  of  how  many  millions  ! 

Such  men  think  only  just  so  much  as  is  necessary  to  carry  out  their  will 
for  the  moment.  They  never  reflect  upon  their  life  as  a  connected  whole, 
let  alone,  then,  upon  existence  in  general  ;  to  a  certain  extent  they  may 
be  said  to  exist  without  really  knowing  it.  The  existence  of  the  mobs- 
man  or  the  slave  who  lives  on  in  this  unthinking  way,  stands  very  much 
nearer  than  ours  to  that  of  the  brutej  which  is  confined  entirely  to  the 
present  moment ;  but,  for  that  very  reason,  it  has  also  less  of  pain  in  it 
than  ours.  Nay,  since  all  pleasure  is  in  its  nature  negative,  that  is  to  say, 
consists  in  freedom  from  some  form  of  misery  or  need,  the  constant  and 
rapid  interchange  between  setting  about  something  and  getting  it  done, 
which  is  the  permanent  accompaniment  of  the  work  they  do,  and  then 
.again  the  augmented  form  which  this  takes  when  they  go  from  work  to 
rest  and  the  satisfaction  of  their  needs— all  this  gives  them  a  constant 
source  of  enjoyment  ;  and  the  fact  that  it  is  much  commoner  to  see 
happy  faces  amongst  the  poor  than  amongst  the  rich,  is  a  sure  proof  that 
it  is  used  to  good  advantage. 

Passing  from  this  kind  of  man,  consider,  next,  the  sober,  sensible  mer- 
chant, who  leads  a  life  of  speculation,  thinks  long  over  his  plans  and  car- 
ries them  out  with  great  care,  founds  a  house,  and  provides  for  his  wif 
his  children  and  descendants ;  takes  his  share,  too,  in  the  life  of  the  com 


38  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

munity.  It  is  obvious  that  a  man  like  this  has  a  much  higher  degree  of 
consciousness  than  the  former,  and  so  his  existence  has  a  higher  degree 
of  reality. 

Then  look  at  the  man  of  learning,  who  investigates,  it  may  be,  the  his- 
tory of  the  past.  He  will  have  reached  the  point  at  which  a  man  be- 
comes conscious  of  existence  as  a  whole,  sees  beyond  the  period  of  his 
own  life,  beyond  his  own  personal  interests,  thinking  over  the  whole 
course  of  the  world's  history. 

Then,  finally,  look  at  the  poet  or  the  philosopher,  in  whom  reflection  has 
reached  such  a  height,  that,  instead  of  being  drawn  on  to  investigate  any 
one  particular  phenomenon  of  existence,  he  stands  in  amazement  before 
existence  itself,  this  great  sphinx,  and  makes  it  his  problem.  In  him  con- 
sciousness has  reached  the  degree  of  clearness  at  which  it  embraces  the 
world  itself:  his  intellect  has  completely  abandoned  its  function  as  the 
servant  of  his  will,  and  now  holds  the  world  before  him  ;  and  the  world 
calls  upon  him  much  more  to  examine  and  consider  it,  than  to  play  a 
part  in  it  himself.  If,  then,  the  degree  of  consciousness  is  the  degree  of 
reality,  such  a  man  will  be  said  to  exist  most  of  all,  and  there  will  be 
sense  and  significance  in  so  describing  him. 

Between  the  two  extremes  here  sketched,  and  the  intervening  stages, 
everyone  will  be  able  to  find  the  place  at  which  he  himself  stands. 

We  know  that  man  is  in  general  superior  to  all  other  animals,  and 
this  is  also  the  case  in  his  capacity  for  being  trained.  Mohammedans  are 
trained  to  pray  with  their  faces  turned  towards  Mecca,  five  times  a  day ; 
and  they  never  fail  to  do  it.  Christians  are  trained  to  cross  themselves  on 
certain  occasions,  to  bow,  and  so  on.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  relig- 
ion is  the  chef-d'oeuvre  of  the  art  of  training,  because  it  trains  people  in 
the  way  they  shall  think  :  and,  as  is  well  known,  you  cannot  begin  the 
process  too  early.  There  is  no  absurdity  so  palpable  but  that  it  may  be 
firmly  planted  in  the  human  head  if  you  only  begin  to  inculcate  it  before 
the  age  of  five,  by  constantly  repeating  it  with  an  air  of  great  solemnity. 
For  as  in  the  case  of  animals,  so  in  that  of  men,  training  is  successful 
only  when  you  begin  in  early  youth. 

Noblemen  and  gentlemen  are  trained  to  hold  nothing  sacred  but  their 
word  of  honor — to  maintain  a  zealous,  rigid,  and  unshaken  belief  in 
the  ridiculous  code  of  chivalry ;  and  if  they  are  called  upon  to  do  so, 
to  seal  their  belief  by  dying  for  it,  and  seriously  to  regard  a  king  as  a  be- 
ing of  a  higher  order. 

Again,  our  expressions  of  politeness,  the  compliments  we  make,  in  par- 
ticular, the  respectful  attentions  we  pay  to  ladies,  are  a  matter  of  train- 
ing ;  as  also  our  esteem  for  good  birth,  rank,  titles,  and  so  on.  Of  the 
same  character  is  the  resentment  we  feel  at  any  insult  directed  against  us; 
and  the  measure  of  this"  resentment  may  be  exactly  determined  by  the  na- 
ture of  the  insult.  An  Englishman,  for  instance,  thinks  it  a  deadly  in- 


FUR  THER  PS YCHOLOGICA L  OBSER  VA  TIONS.    39 

suit  to  be  told  that  he  is  no  gentleman,  or,  still  worse,  that  he  is  a  liar  ; 
a  Frenchman  has  the  same  feeling  if  you  call  him  a  coward,  and  a  Ger- 
man if  you  say  he  is  stupid. 

There  are  many  persons  who  are  trained  to  be  strictly  honorable  in 
regard  to  one  particular  matter,  while  they  have  little  honor  to  boast  of 
in  anything  else.  Many  a  man,  for  instance,  will  not  steal  your  money  : 
but  he  will  lay  hands  on  everything  of  yours  that  he  can  enjoy  without 
having  to  pay  for  it.  A  man  of  business  will  often  deceive  you  without 
the  slightest  scruple,  but  he  will  absolutely  refuse  to  commit  a  theft. 

Imagination  is  strong  in  a  man  when  that  particular  function  of  the 
brain  which  enables  him  to  observe  is  roused  to  activity  without  any 
necessary  excitement  of  the  senses.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  imagina- 
tion is  active  just  in  proportion  as  our  senses  are  not  excited  by  external 
.objects.  A  long  period  of  solitude,  whether  in  prison  or  in  a  sick-room  : 
quiet,  twilight,  darkness — these  are  the  things  that  promote  its  activity  ; 
and  under  their  influence  it  comes  into  play  of  itself.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  a  great  deal  of  material  is  presented  to  our  faculties  of  observation, 
as  happens  on  a  journey,  or  in  the  hurly-burly  of  the  world,  or,  again,  in 
broad  daylight,  the  imagination  is  idle,  and,  even  though  call  may  be 
made  upon  it,  refuses  to  become  ac  tive,  as  though  it  understood  that  that 
was  not  its  proper  time. 

However,  if  the  imagination  is  to  yield  any  real  product,  it  must  have 
received  a  great  deal  of  material  from  the  external  world.  This  is  the  only 
way  in  which  its  storehouse  can  be  filled.  The  phantasy  is  nourished 
much  in  the  same  way  as  the  body,  which  is  least  capable  of  any  work 
and  enjoys  doing  nothing,  just  in  the  very  moment  when  it  receives  its 
food,  which  it  has  to  digest.  And  yet  it  is  to  this  very  food  that  it  owes 
the  power  which  it  afterwards  puts  forth  at  the  right  time. 

Opinion  is  like  a  pendulum  and  obeys  the  same  law.  If  it  goes  past 
the  centre  of  gravity  on  one  side,  it  must  go  a  like  distance  on  the  other  ; 
and  it  is  only  after  a  certain  time  that  it  finds  the  true  point  at  which  it 
can  remain  at  rest. 

By  a  process  of  contraction,  distance  in  space  makes  things  look  small, 
and  therefore  free  from  defect.  This  is  why  a  landscape  looks  so 
much  better  in  a  contracting  mirror  or  in  a  camera  obscura,  than  it  is  in 
reality.  The  same  effect  is  produced  by  distance  in  time.  The  scenes 
and  events  of  long  ago,  and  the  persons  who  took  part  in  them,  wear  a 
charming  aspect  to  the  eye  of  memory,  which  sees  only  the  outlines  and 
takes  no  note  of  disagreeable  details.  The  present  enjoys  no  such  ad- 
vantage, and  so  it  always  seems  defective. 

And  again,  as  regards  space,  small  objects  close  to  us  look  big,  and  if 
they  are  very  close,  we  may  be  able  to  see  nothing  else,  but  when  we  go 


4o  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

a  little  way  off,  they  become  minute  and  invisible.  It  is  the  same,  again, 
as  regards  time.  The  little  incidents  and  accidents  of  every  day  fill  us 
with  emotion,  anxiety,  annoyance,  passion,  as  long  as  they  are  close  to  us, 
when  they  appear  so  big,  so  important,  so  serious;  but  as  soon  as  they  are 
borne  down  the  restless  stream  of  time,  they  lose  what  significance  they 
had;  we  think  no  more  of  them  and  soon  forget  them  altogether.  They 
were  big  only  because  they  were  near. 

Joy  and  sorrow  are  not  ideas  of  the  mind,  but  affections  of  the  will,  and 
so  they  do  not  lie  in  the  domain  of  memory.  We  cannot  recall  our  joys  and 
sorrows;  by  which  I  mean  that  we  cannot  renew  them.  We  can  recall 
only  the  ideas  that  accompanied  them;  and,  in  particular,  the  things  we 
were  led  to  say;  and  these  form  a  gauge  of  our  feelings  at  the  time. 
Hence  our  memory  of  joys  and  sorrows  is  always  imperfect,  and  they  be- 
come a  matter  of  indifference  to  us  as  soon  as  they  are  over.  This  ex- 
plains the  vanity  of  the  attempt,  which  we  sometimes  make,  to  revive  the 
pleasures  and  the  pains  of  the  past.  Pleasure  and  pain  are  essentially  an 
affair  of  the  will;  and  the  will,  as  such,  is  not  possessed  of  memory,  which 
is  a  function  of  the  intellect;  and  this  in  its  turn  gives  out  and  takes  in 
nothing  but  thoughts  and  ideas,  which  are  not  here  in  question. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  in  bad  days  we  can  very  vividly  recall  the  good 
time  that  is  now  no  more;  but  that  in  good  days,  we  have  only  a  very 
cold  and  imperfect  memory  of  the  bad. 

We  have  a  much  better  memory  for  actual  objects  or  pictures  than  for 
mere  ideas.  Hence  a  good  imagination  makes  it  easier  to  learn  lan- 
guages; for  by  its  aid,  the  new  world  is  at  once  united  with  the  actual 
object  to  which  it  refers;  whereas,  if  there  is  no  imagination,  it  is  simply 
put  on  a  parallel  with  the  equivalent  word  in  the  mother  tongue. 

Mnemonics  should  not  only  mean  the  art  of  keeping  something  in- 
directly in  the  memory  by  the  use  of  some  direct  pun  or  witticism;  it 
should,  rather,  be  applied  to  a  systematic  theory  of  memory,  and  explain 
its  several  attributes  by  reference  both  to  its  real  nature,  and  to  the  rela- 
tion in  which  these  attributes  stand  to  one  another. 

There  are  moments  in  life  when  our  senses  obtain  a  higher  and  rarer 
degree  of  clearness,  apart  from  any  particular  occasion  for  it  in  the 
nature  of  our  surroundings;  and  explicable,  rather  on  physiological  grounds 
alone,  as  the  result  of  some  enhanced  state  of  susceptibility,  working  from 
within  outwards.  Such  moments  remain  indelibly  impressed  upon  the 
memory,  and  preserve  themselves  in  their  individuality  entire.  We  can 
assign  no  reason  for  it,  nor  explain  why  this  among  so  many  thousand 
moments  like  it  should  be  specially  remembered.  It  seems  as  much  a 
matter  of  chance  as  when  single  specimens  of  a  whole  race  of  animals  now 
extinct  are  discovered  in  the  layers  of  a  rock;  or  when,  on  opening  a  book, 


FURTHER  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS.     41 

we  light  upon  an  insect  accidentally  crushed  within  the  leaves.     Memories 
of  this  kind  are  always  sweet  and  pleasant. 

It  occasionally  happens  that,  for  no  particular  reason,  long-forgotten 
scenes  suddenly  start  up  in  the  memory.  This  may  in  many  cases  be  due 
to  the  action  of  some  hardly  perceptible  odor,  which  accompanied  those 
scenes  and  now  recurs  exactly  the  same  as  before.  For  it  is  well  known 
that  the  sense  of  smell  is  specially  effective  in  awaking  memories,  and  that 
in  general  it  does  not  require  much  to  rouse  a  train  of  ideas.  And  I  may 
say,  in  passing,  that  the  sense  of  sight  is  connected  with  the  understand- 
ing,1  the  sense  of  hearing  with  the  reason,2  and,  as  we  see  in  the  present 
case,  the  sense  of  smell  with  the  memory.  Touch  and  Taste  are  more 
material  and  dependent  upon  contact.  They  have  no  ideal  side. 

-It  must  also  be  reckoned  among  the  pecular  attributes  of  memory  that 
a  slight  state  of  intoxication  often  so  greatly  enhances  the  recollection  of 
past  times  and  scenes,  that  all  the  circumstances  connected  with  them 
come  back  much  more  clearly  than  would  be  possible  in  a  state  of 
sobriety  ;  but  that,  on  the  other  hand,  the  recollection  of  what  one  said 
or  did  while  the  intoxication  lasted,  is  more  than  usually  imperfect ;  nay, 
that  if  one  has  been  absolutely  tipsy,  it  is  gone  altogether.  We  may  say, 
then,  that  whilst  intoxication  enhances  the  memory  for  what  is  past,  it 
allows  it  to  remember  little  of  the  present. 

Men  need  some  kind  of  external  activity,  because  they  are  inactive 
within.  Contrarily,  if  they  are  active  within,  they  do  not  care  to  be 
dragged  out  of  themselves  ;  it  disturbs  and  impedes  their  thoughts  in  a 
way  that  is  often  most  ruinous  to  them. 

I  am  not  surprised  that  some  people  are  bored  when  they  find  them- 
selves alone  ;  for  they  cannot  laugh  if  they  are  quite  by  themselves.  The 
very  idea  of  it  seems  folly  to  them. 

Are  we,  then,  to  look  upon  laughter  as  merely  a  signal  for  others — a 
mere  sign,  like  a  word  ?  What  makes  it  impossible  for  people  to  laugh 
when  they  are  alone  is  nothing  but  want  of  imagination,  dulness  of 
mind  generally — avai6^rj6ia  nai  f3pa.8vTrj^  if>vx?J?,  as  Theophrastus 
has  it.3  The  lower  animals  never  laugh,  either  alone  or  in  company. 
Myson,  the  misanthropist,  was  once  surprised  by  one  of  these  people  as 
he  was  laughing  to  himself.  Why  do  you  laugh  />  he  asked  ;  there  is  no 
one  with  you.  That  is  just  why  I  am  laughing,  said  Myson. 

Natural  gesticulation,  such  as  commonly  accompanies  any  lively  talk, 

•  Vierfache  Wurzel,  §21. 

•  Parerga,  vol.  ii.,  §  311. 

•  Characters,  c.  27. 


42  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

is  a  language  of  its  own,  more  wide-spread,  even,  than  the  language 
of  words — so  far,  I  mean,  as  it  is  independent  of  words  and  alike 
in  all  nations.  It  is  true  that  nations  make  use  of  it  in  proportion 
as  they  are  vivacious,  and  that  in  particular  cases,  amongst  the  Italians, 
for  instance,  it  is  supplemented  by  certain  peculiar  gestures  which  are 
merely  conventional,  and  therefore  possessed  of  nothing  more  than  a  local 
value. 

In  the  universal  use  made  of  it,  gesticulation  has  some  analogy  with 
logic  and  grammar,  in  that  it  has  to  do  with  the  form,  rather  than  with 
the  matter,  of  conversation  ;  but  on  the  other  hand  it  is  distinguishable 
from  them  by  the  fact  that  it  has  more  of  a  moral  than  of  an  intellectual 
bearing  ;  in  other  words,  it  reflects  the  movements  of  the  will.  As  an 
accompaniment  of  conversation  it  is  like  the  base  of  a  melody  ;  and  if,  as 
in  music,  it  keeps  true  to  the  progress  of  the  treble,  it  serves  to  heighten 
the  effect. 

In  a  conversation,  the  gesture  depends  upon  the  form  in  which  the 
subject-matter  is  conveyed  ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that,  whatever 
that  subject-matter  may  be,  with  a  recurrence  of  the  form,  the  very  same 
gesture  is  repeated.  So  if  I  happen  to  see — from  my  window,  say — two 
persons  carrying  on  a  lively  conversation,  without  my  being  able  to  catch 
a  word,  I  can,  nevertheless,  understand  the  general  nature  of  it  perfectly 
well ;  I  mean,  the  kind  of  thing  that  is  being  said  and  the  form  it  takes. 
There  is  no  mistake  about  it.  The  speaker  is  arguing  about  something, 
advancing  his  reasons,  then  limiting  their  application,  then  driving  them 
home  and  drawing  the  conclusion  in  triumph  ;  or  he  is  recounting  his 
experiences,  proving,  perhaps,  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  how  much 
he  has  been  injured,  but  bringing  the  clearest  and  most  damning  evidence 
to  show  that  his  opponents  were  foolish  and  obstinate  people  who  would 
not  be  convinced  ;  or  else  he  is  telling  of  the  splendid  plan  he  laid,  and 
how  he  carried  it  to  a  successful  issue,  or  perhaps  failed  because  the  luck 
was  against  him  ;  or,  it  may  be,  he  is  saying  that  he  was  completely  at  a 
loss  to  know  what  to  do,  or  that  he  was  quick  in  seeing  through  some 
trap  set  for  him,  and  that  by  insisting  on  his  rights  or  by  applying  a  littte 
force,  he  succeeded  in  frustrating  and  punishing  his  enemies ;  and  so  on 
in  hundreds  of  cases  of  a  similar  kind. 

Strictly  speaking,  however,  what  I  get  from  gesticulation  alone  is  an 
abstract  notion  of  the  essential  drift  of  what  is  being  said,  and  that,  too, 
whether  I  judge  from  a  moral  or  an  intellectual  'point  of  view.  It  is  the 
quintessence,  the  true  substance  of  the  conversation,  and  this  remains 
identical,  no  matter  what  may  have  given  rise  to  the  conversation,  or  what 
it  may  be  about ;  the  relation  between  the  two  being  that  of  a  general 
idea  or  class-name  to  the  individuals  which  it  covers. 

As  I  have  said,  the  most  interesting  and  amusing  part  of  the  matter  is 
the  complete  identity  and  solidarity  of  the  gestures  used  to  denote  the 
same  set  of  circumstances,  even  though  by  people  of  very  different  tem- 


FURTHER  PSYCHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS.    43 

perament ;  so  that  the  gestures  become  exactly  like  words  of  a  language, 
alike  for  every  one,  and  subject  only  to  such  small  modifications  as  de- 
pend upon  variety  of  accent  and  education.  And  yet  there  can  be  no 
doubt  but  that  these  standing  gestures  which  every  one  uses  are  the  re- 
sult of  no  convention  or  collusion.  They  are  original  and  innate — a  true 
language  of  nature  ;  consolidated,  it  may  be,  by  imitation  and  the  in- 
fluence of  custom. 

It  is  well  known  that  it  is  part  of  an  actor's  duty  to  make  a  careful 
study  of  gesture ;  and  the  same  thing  is  true,  to  a  somewhat  smaller  de- 
gree, of  a  public  speaker.  This  study  must  consist  chiefly  in  watching 
others  and  imitating  their  movements,  for  there  are  no  abstract  rules  fairly 
applicable  to  the  matter,  with  the  exception  of  some  very  general  leading 
principles,  such  as — to  take  an  example — that  the  gesture  must  not  follow 
the  word,  but  rather  come  immediately  before  it,  by  way  of  announcing 
its  approach  and  attracting  the  hearer's  attention. 

Englishmen  entertain  a  peculiar  contempt  for  gesticulation,  and  look 
upon  it  as  something  vulgar  and  undignified.  This  seems  to  me  a  silly 
prejudice  on  their  part,  and  the  outcome  of  their  general  prudery.  For 
here  we  have  a  language  which  nature  has  given  to  every  one,  and  which 
every  one  understands ;  and  to  do  away  with  and  forbid  it  for  no  better 
reason  than  that  it  is  opposed  to  that  much-lauded  thing,  gentlemanly 
feeling,  is  a  very  questionable  proceeding. 


ON    EDUCATION. 


THE  human  intellect  is  said  to  be  so  constituted  that  general  ideas 
arise  by  abstraction  from  particular  observations,  and  therefore  come 
after  them  in  point  of  time.  If  this  is  what  actually  occurs,  as  happens 
in  the  case  of  a  man  who  has  to  depend  solely  upon  his  own  experience 
for  what  he  learns, — who  has  no  teacher  and  no  book, — such  a  man 
knows  quite  well  which  of  his  particular  observations  belong  to  and  are 
represented  by  each  of  his  general  ideas.  He  has  a  perfect  acquaintance 
•with  both  sides  of  his  experience,  and  accordingly,  he  treats  everything 
that  comes  in  his  way  from  a  right  standpoint.  This  might  be  called  the 
natural  method  of  education. 

Contrarily,  the  artificial  method  is  to  hear  what  other  people  say,  to 
learn  and  to  read,  and  so  to  get  your  head  crammed  full  of  general  ideas 
before  you  have  any  sort  of  extended  acquaintance  with  the  world  as  it  is, 
and  as  you  may  see  it  for  yourself.  You  will  be  told  that  the  particular 
observations  which  go  to  make  these  general  ideas  will  come  to  you  later 
on  in  the  course  of  experience;  but  until  that  time  arrives,  you  apply  your 
general  ideas  wrongly,  you  judge  men  and  things  from  a  wrong  stand- 
point, you  see  them  in  a  wrong  light,  and  treat  them  in  a  wrong  way. 
So  it  is  that  education  perverts  the  mind. 

This  explains  why  it  so  frequently  happens  that,  after  a  long  course  of 
learning  and  reading,  we  enter  upon  the  world  in  our  youth,  partly  with 
an  artless  ignorance  of  things,  partly  with  wrong  notions  about  them :  so 
that  our  demeanor  savors  at  one  moment  of  a  nervous  anxiety,  at  another 
of  a  mistaken  confidence.  The  reason  of  this  is  simply  that  our  head  is 
full  of  general  ideas  which  we  are  now  trying  to  turn  to  some  use,  but 
which  we  hardly  ever  apply  rightly.  This  is  the  result  of  acting  in  direct 
opposition  to  the  natural  development  of  the  mind  by  obtaining  general 
ideas  first,  and  particular  observations  last;  it  is  putting  the  cart  before 
the  horse.  Instead  of  developing  the  child's  own  faculties  of  discernment, 
and  teaching  it  to  judge  and  think  for  itself,  the  teacher  uses  all  his  ener- 
gies to  stuff  its  head  full  of  the  ready-made  thoughts  of  other  people. 
The  mistaken  views  of  life,  which  spring  from  a  false  application  of  general 
deas,  have  afterwards  to  be  corrected  by  long  years  of  experience;  and 

44 


ON  EDUCA  TION.  45 

it  is  seldom  that  they  are  wholly  corrected.  This  is  why  so  few  men  of 
learning  are  possessed  of  common-sense,  such  as  is  often  to  be  met  with 
in  people  who  have  had  no  instruction  at  all. 

To  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  world  might  be  defined  as  the  aim  of  all 
education;  and  it  follows  from  what  I  have  said  that  special  stress  should 
be  laid  upon  beginning  to  acquire  this  knowledge  at  the  right  end.  As  I 
have  shown,  this  means,  in  the  main,  that  the  particular  observation  of  a 
thing  shall  precede  the  general  idea  of  it;  further,  that  narrow  and  cir- 
cumscribed ideas  shall  come  before  ideas  of  a  wide  range.  It  means, 
therefore,  that  the  whole  system  of  education  shall  follow  in  the  steps  that 
must  have  been  taken  by  the  ideas  themselves  in  the  course  of  their  for- 
mation. But  whenever  any  of  these  steps  are  skipped  or  left  out,  the  in- 
struction is  defective,  and  the  ideas  obtained  are  false;  and,  finally,  a  dis- 
torted view  of  the  world  arises,  peculiar  to  the  individual  himself — a  view 
such  as  almost  everyone  entertains  for  some  time,  and  most  men  for  as 
long  as  they  live.  No  one  can  look  into  his  own  mind  without  seeing 
that  it  was  only  after  reaching  a  very  mature  age,  and  in  some  cases  when 
he  least  expected  it,  that  he  came  to  a  right  understanding  or  a  clear  view 
of  many  matters  in  his  life  that,  after  all,  were  not  very  difficult  or  com- 
plicated. Up  till  then,  they  were  points  in  his  knowledge  of  the  world 
which  were  still  obscure,  due  to  his  having  skipped  some  particular  les- 
son in  those  early  days  of  his  education,  whatever  it  may  have  been  like 
— whether  artificial  and  conventional,  or  of  that  natural  kind  which  is 
based  upon  individual  experience. 

It  follows  that  an  attempt  should  be  made  to  find  out  the  strictly 
natural  course  of  knowledge,  so  that  education  may  proceed  methodi- 
cally by  keeping  to  it;  and  that  children  may  become  acquainted  with 
the  ways  of  the  world,  without  getting  wrong  ideas  into  their  heads, 
which  very  often  cannot  be  got  out  again.  If  this  plan  were  adopted, 
special  care  would  have  to  be  taken  to  prevent  children  from  using  words 
without  clearly  understanding  their  meaning  and  application.  The  fatal 
tendency  to  be  satisfied  with  words  instead  of  trying  to  understand  things 
— to  learn  phrases  by  heart,  so  that  they  may  prove  a  refuge  in  time  of 
need,  exists,  as  a  rule,  even  in  children;  and  the  tendency  lasts  on  into 
manhood,  making  the  knowledge  of  many  learned  persons  to  consist  in 
mere  verbiage. 

However,  the  main  endeavor  must  always  be  to  let  particular  observa- 
tions precede  general  ideas,  and  not  vice  versa,  as  is  usually  and  unfor- 
tunately the  case;  as  though  a  child  should  come  feet  foremost  into  the 
world,  or  a  verse  be  begun  by  writing  down  the  rhyme  !  The  ordinary 
method  is  to  imprint  ideas  and  opinions,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
prejudices,  on  the  mind  of  the  child,  before  it  has  had  any  but  a  very  few 
particular  observations.  It  is  thus  that  he  afterwards  comes  to  view  the 
world  and  gather  experience  through  the  medium  of  those  ready-made 
ideas,  rather  than  to  let  his  ideas  be  formed  for  him  out  of  his  own  ex- 
perience of  life,  as  they  ought  to  be. 


46  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

A  man  sees  a  great  many  things  when  he  looks  at  the  world  for  him- 
self, and  he  sees  them  from  many  sides;  but  this  method  of  learning  is  not 
nearly  so  short  or  so  quick  as  the  method  which  employs  abstract  ideas 
and  makes  hasty  generalisations  about  everything.  Experience,  therefore, 
will  be  a  long  time  in  correcting  preconceived  ideas,  or  perhaps  never 
bring  its  task  to  an  end;  for  wherever  a  man  finds  that  the  aspect  of  things 
seems  to  contradict  the  general  ideas  he  has  formed,  he  will  begin  by  re- 
jecting the  evidence  it  offers  as  partial  and  one-sided  ;  nay,  he  will  shut 
his  eyes  to  it  altogether  and  deny  that  it  stands  in  any  contradiction  at  all 
with  his  preconceived  notions,  in  order  that  he  may  thus  preserve  them 
uninjured.  So  it  is  that  many  a  man  carries  about  a  burden  of  wrong 
notions  all  his  life  long — crotchets,  whims,  fancies,  prejudices,  which  at 
last  become  fixed  ideas.  The  fact  is  that  he  has  never  tried  to  form  his 
fundamental  ideas  for  himself  out  of  his  own  experience  of  life,  his  own 
way  of  looking  at  the  world,  because  he  has  taken  over  his  ideas  ready- 
made  from  other  people;  and  this  it  is  that  makes  him — as  it  makes  how 
many  others! — so  shallow  and  superficial. 

Instead  of  that  method  of  instruction,  care  should  be  taken  to  educate 
children  on  the  natural  lines.  No  idea  should  ever  be  established  in  a 
child's  mind  otherwise  than  by  what  the  child  can  see  for  itself,  or  at  any 
rate  it  should  be  verified  by  the  same  means  ;  and  the  result  of  this  would 
be  that  the  child's  ideas,  if  few,  would  be  well-grounded  and  accurate. 
It  would  learn  how  to  measure  things  by  its  own  standard  rather  than  by 
another's  ;  and  so  it  would  escape  a  thousand  strange  fancies  and  preju- 
dices, and  not  need  to  have  them  eradicated  by  the  lessons  it  will  subse- 
quently be  taught  in  the  school  of  life.  The  child  would,  in  this  way, 
have  its  mind  once  for  all  habituated  to  clear  views  and  thorough-going 
knowledge  ;  it  would  use  its  own  judgment  and  take  an  unbiased  esti- 
mate of  things. 

And,  in  general,  children  should  not  form  their  notions  of  what  life  is 
like  from  the  copy  before  they  have  learned  it  from  the  original,  to  what- 
ever aspect  of  it  their  attention  may  be  directed.  Instead,  therefore,  of 
hastening  to  place  books,  and  books  alone,  in  their  hands,  let  them  be 
made  acquainted,  step  by  step,  with  things — with  the  actual  circumstan- 
ces of  human  life.  And  above  all  let  care  be  taken  to  bring  them  to  a 
clear  and  objective  view  of  the  world  as  it  is,  to  educate  them  always  to 
derive  their  ideas  directly  from  real  life,  and  to  shape  them  in  conformity 
with  it — not  to  fetch  them  from  other  scources,  such  as  books,  fairy  tales, 
or  what  people  say — then  to  apply  them  ready-made  to  real  life.  For  this 
will  mean  that  their  heads  are  full  of  wrong  notions,  and  that  they  will 
either  see  things  in  a  false  light  or  try  in  vain  to  remodel  the  world  to  suit 
their  views,  and  so  enter  upon  false  paths  ;  and  that,  too,  whether  they 
are  only  constructing  theories  of  life  or  engaged  in  the  actual  business  of 
it  It  is  incredible  how  much  harm  is  done  when  the  seeds  of  wrong  no- 
tions are  laid  in  the  mind  in  those  early  years,  later  on  to  bear  a  crop  of 


ON  EDUCA  TION.  47 

prejudice  ;  for  the  subsequent  lessons  which  are  learned  from  real  life  in 
the  world  have  to  be  devoted  mainly  to  their  extirpation.  To  unlearn  the 
•evil  was  the  answer  which,  according  to  Diogenes  Laertius, '  Antisthenes 
gave,  when  he  was  asked  what  branch  of  knowledge  was  most  necessary  ; 
and  we  can  see  what  he  meant. 

No  child  under  the  age  of  fifteen  should  receive  instruction  in  subjects 
which  may  possibly  be  the  vehicle  of  serious  error,  such  as  philosophy, 
religion,  or  any  other  branch  of  knowledge  where  it  is  necessary  to  take 
large  views  ;  because  wrong  notions  imbibed  early  can  seldom  be  rooted 
out,  and  of  all  the  intellectual  faculties,  judgment  is  the  last  to  arrive  at 
maturity.  The  child  should  give  its  attention  either  to  subjects  where  no 
error  is  possible  at  all,  such  as  mathematics,  or  to  those  in  which  there 
is  no  particular  danger  in  making  a  mistake,  such  as  languages,  natural 
science,  history,  and  so  on.  And  in  general,  the  branches  of  knowledge 
which  are  to  be  studied  at  any  period  of  life  should  be  such  as  the  mind 
is  equal  to  at  that  period  and  can  perfectly  understand.  Childhood  and 
youth  'form  the  time  for  collecting  materials,  for  getting  a  special  and 
thorough  knowledge  of  individual  and  particular  things.  In  those  years 
it  is  too  early  to  form  views  on  a  large  scale  ;  and  ultimate  explanations 
must  be  put  off  to  a  later  date.  The  faculty  of  judgment,  which  cannot 
come  into  play  without  mature  experience,  should  be  left  to  itself ;  and 
care  should  be  taken  not  to  anticipate  its  action  by  inculcating  prejudice, 
which  will  paralyse  it  for  ever. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  memory  should  be  specially  taxed  in  youth, 
since  it  is  then  that  it  is  strongest  and  most  tenacious.  But  in  choosing 
the  things  that  should  be  committed  to  memory  the  utmost  care  and  fore- 
thought must  be  exercised  ;  as  lessons  well  learnt  in  youth  are  never  for- 
gotten. This  precious  soil  must  therefore  be  cultivated  so  as  to  bear  as 
much  fruit  as  possible.  If  you  think  how  deeply  rooted  in  your  memory 
are  those  persons  whom  you  knew  in  the  first  twelve  years  of  your  life,  how 
indelible  the  impression  made  upon  you  by  the  events  of  those  years,  how 
clear  your  recollection  of  most  of  the  things  that  happened  to  you  then, 
most  of  what  was  told  or  taught  you,  it  will  seem  a  natural  thing  to  take 
the  susceptibility  and  tenacity  of  the  mind  at  that  period  as  the  ground- 
work of  education.  This  may  be  done  by  a  strict  observance  of  method, 
and  a  systematic  regulation  of  the  impressions  which  the  mind  is  to  re- 
ceive. 

But  the  years  of  youth  allotted  to  man  are  short,  and  memory  is,  in 
general,  bound  within  narrow  limits  ;  still  more  so,  the  memory  of  any 
one  individual.  Since  this  is  the  case,  it  is  all-important  to  fill  the  mem- 
ory with  what  is  essential  and  material  in  any  branch  of  knowledge,  to  the 
exclusion  of  everything  else.  The  decision  as  to  what  is  essential  and 
material  should  rest  with  the  master-minds  in  every  department  of  thought  ; 
their  choice  should  be  made  after  the  most  mature  deliberation,  and  the 

1  vi.  7. 


48  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

outcome  of  it  fixed  and  determined.  Such  a  choice  would  have  to  pro- 
ceed by  sifting  the  things  which  it  is  necessary  and  important  for  a  man 
to  know  in  general,  and  then,  necessary  and  important  for  him  to  know 
in  any  particular  business  or  calling.  Knowledge  of  the  first  kind  would 
have  to  be  classified,  after  an  encyclopaedic  fashion,  in  graduated  courses, 
adapted  to  the  degree  of  general  culture  which  a  man  may  be  expected  to 
have  in  the  circumstances  in  which  he  is  placed  :  beginning  with  a  course 
limited  to  the  necessary  requirements  of  primary  education,  and  extend- 
ing upwards  to  the  subjects  treated  of  in  all  the  branches  of  philosophical 
thought  The  regulation  of  the  second  kind  of  knowledge  would  be  left 
to  those  who  had  shown  genuine  mastery  in  the  several  departments  into 
which  it  is  divided;  and  the  whole  system  would  provide  an  elaborate 
rule  or  canon  for  intellectual  education,  which  would,  of  course,  have  to 
be  revised  every  ten  years.  Some  such  arrangement  as  this  would  employ 
the  youthful  power  of  the  memory  to  best  advantage,  and  supply  excellent 
working  material  to  the  faculty  of  judgment,  when  it  made  its  appearance 
later  on. 

A  man's  knowledge  may  be  said  to  be  mature,  in  other  words  it  has 
reached  the  most  complete  state  of  perfection  to  which  he,  as  an  individ- 
ual, is  capable  of  bringing  it,  when  an  exact  correspondence  is  established 
between  the  whole  of  his  abstract  ideas  and  the  things  he  has  actually 
perceived  for  himself.  This  will  mean  that  each  of  his  abstract  ideas 
rests,  directly  or  indirectly,  upon  a  basis  of  observation,  which  alone 
endows  it  with  any  real  value ;  and  also  that  he  is  able  to  place  every 
observation  he  makes  under  the  right  abstract  idea  which  belongs  to  it. 
Maturity  is  the  work  of  experience  alone  ;  and  therefore  it  requires  time. 
The  knowledge  we  derive  from  our  own  observation  is  usually  distinct 
from  that  which  we  acquire  through  the  medium  of  abstract  ideas  ;  the 
one  coming  to  us  in  the  natural  way,  the  other  by  what  people  tell  us, 
and  the  course  of  instruction  we  receive,  whether  it  is  good  or  bad.  The 
result  is,  that  in  youth  there  is  generally  very  little  agreement  or  corre- 
spondence between  our  abstract  ideas,  which  are  merely  phrases  fixed  in 
the  mind,  and  that  real  knowledge  which  we  have  obtained  by  our  own 
observation.  It  is  only  later  on  that  a  gradual  approach  takes  place  be- 
tween these  two  kinds  of  knowledge,  accompanied  by  a  mutual  correction 
of  error ;  and  knowledge  is  not  mature  until  this  coalition  is  accomplished. 
This  maturity  or  perfection  of  knowledge  is  something  quite  independent 
of  another  kind  of  perfection,  which  may  be  of  a  high  or  a  low  order— 
the  perfection,  I  mean,  to  which  a  man  may  bring  his  own  individual 
faculties  ;  which  is  measured,  not  by  any  correspondence  between  the 
two  kinds  of  knowledge,  but  by  the  degree  of  intensity  which  each  kind 
attains. 

For  the  practical  man  the  most  needful  thing  is  to  acquire  an  accurate 
and  profound  knowledge  of  the  ways  of  the  world.  But  this,  though  the 
most  needful,  is  also  the  most  wearisome  of  all  studies,  as  a  man  may 


ON  EDUCA  TION.  49 

reach  a  great  age  without  coming  to  the  end  of  his  task  ;  whereas,  in  the 
domain_of  the  sciences,  he  masters  the  more  important  facts  when  he  is 
still  young.  In  acquiring  that  knowledge  of  the  world,  it  is  while  he  is  a 
novice,  namely,  in  boyhood  and  in  youth,  that  the  first  and  hardest  les- 
sons are  put  before  him  ;  but  it  often  happens  that  even  in  later  years 
there  is  still  a  great  deal  to  be  learned. 

The  study  is  difficult  enough  in  itself;  but  the  difficulty  is  doubled  by 
novels,  which  represent  a  state  of  things  in  life  and  the  world,  such  as,  in 
fact,  does  not  exist.  Youth  is  credulous,  and  accepts  these  views  of  life, 
which  then  become  part  and  parcel  of  the  mind;  so  that,  instead  of  a 
merely  negative  condition  of  ignorance,  you  have  positive  error — a  whole 
tissue  of  false  notions  to  start  with;  and  at  a  later  date  these  actually 
spoil  the  schooling  of  experience,  and  put  a  wrong  construction  on  the 
lessons  it  teaches.  If,  before  this,  the  youth  had  no  light  at  all  to  guide 
him,  4ie  is  now  misled  by  a  will-o-the-wisp;  still  more  often  is  this  the 
case  with  a  girl.  They  have  both  had  a  false  view  of  things  foisted  on  to 
them  by  reading  novels;  and  expectations  have  been  aroused  which  can 
never  be  fulfilled.  This  generally  exercises  a  baneful  influence  on  their 
whole  life.  In  this  respect  those  whose  youth  has  allowed  them  no  time 
or  opportunity  for  reading  novels — those  who  work  with  their  hands  and 
the  like — are  in  a  position  of  decided  advantage.  There  are  a  few  novels 
to  which  this  reproach  cannot  be  addressed — nay,  which  have  an  effect 
the  contrary  of  bad.  First  and  foremost,  to  give  an  example,  Gil  Bias, 
and  the  other  works  of  Le  Sage  (or  rather  their  Spanish  originals);  further, 
The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  and,  to  some  extent,  Sir  Walter  Scott's  novels. 
Don  Quixote  may  be  regarded  as  a  satirical  exhibition  of  the  error  to 
which  I  am  referring. 


ON    NOISE. 


KANT  wrote  a  treatise  on  The  Vital  Powers.  I  should  prefer  to  write 
a  dirge  for  them.  The  super-abundant  display  of  vitality,  which 
takes  the  form  of  knocking,  hammering,  and  tumbling  things  about,  has 
proved  a  daily  torment  to  me  all  my  life  long.  There  are  people,  it  is 
true — nay,  a  great  many  people — who  smile  at  such  things,  because  they 
are  not  sensitive  to  noise  ;  but  they  are  just  the  very  people  who  are  also 
not  sensitive  to  argument,  or  thought,  or  poetry,  or  art,  in  a  word,  to  any 
kind  of  intellectual  influence.  The  reason  of  it  is  that  the  tissue  of  their 
brains  is  of  a  very  rough  and  coarse  quality.  On  the  other  hand,  noise 
is  a  torture  to  intellectual  people.  In  the  biographies  of  almost  all  great 
writers,  or  wherever  else  their  personal  utterances  are  recorded,  I  find 
complaints  about  it ;  in  the  case  of  Kant,  for  instance,  Goethe,  Lichten- 
berg,  Jean  Paul  ;  and  if  it  should  happen  that  any  writer  has  omitted  to 
express  himself  on  the  matter,  it  is  only  for  want  of  an  opportunity. 

This  aversion  to  noise  I  should  explain  as  follows  :  If  you  cut  up  a 
large  diamond  into  little  bits,  it  will  entirely  lose  the  value  it  had  as  a 
whole  ;  and  an  army  divided  up  into  small  bodies  of  soldiers  loses  all  its 
strength.  So  a  great  intellect  sinks  to  the  level  of  an  ordinary  one,  as 
soon  as  it  is  interrupted  and  disturbed,  its  attention  distracted  and  drawn 
off  from  the  matter  in  hand  ;  for  its  superiority  depends  upon  its  power 
of  concentration — of  bringing  all  its  strength  to  bear  upon  one  theme, 
in  the  same  way  as  a  concave  mirror  collects  into  one  point  all  the  rays 
of  light  that  strike  upon  it.  Noisy  interruption  is  a  hindrance  to  this  con- 
centration. That  is  why  distinguished  minds  have  always  shown  such 
an  extreme  dislike  to  disturbance  in  any  form,  as  something  that  breaks 
in  upon  and  distracts  their  thoughts.  Above  all  have  they  been  averse  to 
that  violent  interruption  that  comes  from  noise.  Ordinary  people  are  not 
much  put  out  by  anything  of  the  sort.  The  most  sensible  and  intelligent 
of  all  the  nations  in  Europe  lays  down  the  rule,  Never  interrupt  I  as  the 
eleventh  commandment.  Noise  is  the  most  impertinent  of  all  forms  of 
interruption.  It  is  not  only  an  interruption,  but  also  a  disruption  of 
thought.  Of  course,  where  there  is  nothing  to  interrupt,  noise  will  not 
be  so  particularly  painful.  Occasionally  it  happens  that  some  slight  but 

5° 


ON  NOISE.  51 

constant  noise  continues  to  bother  and  distract  me  for  a  time  before  I  be 
come  distinctly  conscious  of  it.  All  I  feel  is  a  steady  increase  in  the 
labor  of  thinking — just  as  though  I  were  trying  to  walk  with  a  weight 
on  my  foot.  At  last  I  find  out  what  it  is. 

Let  me  now,  however,  pass  from  genus  to  species.  The  most  inex- 
cusable and  disgraceful  of  all  noises  is  the  cracking  of  whips — a  truly  in- 
fernal thing  when  it  is  done  in  the  narrow  resounding  streets  of  a  town. 
I  denounce  it  as  making  a  peaceful  life  impossible  ;  it  puts  an  end  to  all 
quiet  thought.  That  this  cracking  of  whips  should  be  allowed  at  all 
seems  to  me  to  show  in  the  clearest  way  how  senseless  and  thoughtless  is 
the  nature  of  mankind.  No  one  with  anything  like  an  idea  in  his  head 
can  avoid  a  feeling  of  actual  pain  at  this  sudden,  sharp  crack,  which  par- 
alyses the  brain,  rends  the  thread  of  reflection,  and  murders  thought. 
Every  time  this  noise  is  made,  it  must  disturb  a  hundred  people  who  are 
applying  their  minds  to  business  of  some  sort,  no  matter  how  trivial  it 
may  be  ;  while  on  the  thinker  its  effect  is  woeful  and  disastrous,  cutting 
his  thoughts  asunder,  much  as  the  executioner's  axe  severs  the  head  from 
the  body.  No  sound,  be  it  ever  so  shrill,  cuts  so  sharply  into  the  brain 
as  this  cursed  cracking  of  whips  ;  you  feel  the  sting  of  the  lash  right  in- 
side your  head  ;  and  it  affects  the  brain  in  the  same  way  as  touch  af- 
fects a  sensitive  plant,  and  for  the  same  length  of  time. 

With  all  due  respect  for  the  most  holy  doctrine  of  utility,  I  really  can- 
not see  why  a  fellow  who  is  taking  away  a  waggon-load  of  gravel  or  dung 
should  thereby  obtain  the  right  to  kill  in  the  bud  the  thoughts  which  may 
happen  to  be  springing  up  in  ten  thousand  heads — the  number  he  will 
disturb  one  after  another  in  half  an  hour's  drive  through  the  town.  Ham- 
mering, the  barking  of  dogs,  and  the  crying  of  children  are  horrible  to 
hear;  but  your  only  genuine  assassin  of  thought  is  the  crack  of  a  whip; 
it  exists  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  every  pleasant  moment  of  quiet 
thought  that  any  one  may  now  and  then  enjoy.  If  the  driver  had  no 
other  way  of  urging  on  his  horse  than  by  making  this  most  abominable  of 
all  noises,  it  would  be  excusable;  but  quite  the  contrary  is  the  case.  This 
cursed  cracking  of  whips  is  not  only  unnecessary,  but  even  useless.  Its 
aim  is  to  produce  an  effect  upon  the  intelligence  of  the  horse;  but  through 
the  constant  abuse  of  it,  the  animal  becomes  habituated  to  the  sound, 
which  falls  upon  blunted  feelings  and  produces  no  effect  at  all.  The 
horse  does  no  go  any  the  faster  for  it.  You  have  a  remarkable  example 
of  this  in  the  ceaseless  cracking  of  his  whip  on  the  part  of  a  cab-driver, 
while  he  is  proceeding  at  a  slow  pace  on  the  look-out  for  a  fare.  If  he 
were  to  give  his  horse  the  slightest  touch  with  the  whip,  it  would  have 
much  more  effect.  Supposing,  however,  that  it  were  absolutely  necessary 
to  crack  the  whip  in  order  to  keep  the  horse  constantly  in  mind  of  its  pres- 
ence, it  would  be  enough  to  make  the  hundredth  part  of  the  noise.  For 
it  is  a  well-known  fact  that,  in  regard  to  sight  and  hearing,  animals  are 
sensitive  to  even  the  faintest  indications;  they  are  alive  to  things  that  we 


52  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

can  scarcely  perceive.  The  most  surprising  instances  of  this  are  furnished 
by  trained  dogs  and  canary-birds. 

It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  here  we  have  to  do  with  an  act  of  pure 
wantonness;  nay,  with  an  impudent  defiance  offered  to  those  members  of 
the  community  who  work  with  their  heads  by  those  who  work  with  their 
hands.  That  such  infamy  should  be  tolerated  in  a  town  is  a  piece  of  bar- 
barity and  iniquity,  all  the  more  as  it  could  easily  be  remedied  by  a  police- 
notice  to  the  effect  that  every  lash  shall  have  a  knot  at  the  end  of  it. 
There  can  be  no  harm  in  drawing  the  attention  of  the  mob  to  the  fact 
that  the  classes  above  them  work  with  their  heads,  for  any  kind  of  head- 
work  is  mortal  anguish  to  the  man  in  the  street.  A  fellow  who  rides 
through  the  narrow  alleys  of  a  populous  town  with  unemployed  post- 
horses  or  cart-horses,  and  keeps  on  cracking  a  whip  several  yards  long 
with  all  his  might,  deserves  there  and  then  to  stand  down  and  receive  five 
really  good  blows  with  a  stick.  All  the  philanthropists  in  the  world,  and 
all  the  legislators,  meeting  to  advocate  and  decree  the  total  abolition  of 
corporal  punishment,  will  never  persuade  me  to  the  contrary  !  There  is 
something  even  more  disgraceful  than  what  I  have  just  mentioned.  Often 
enough  you  may  see  a  carter  walking  along  the  street,  quite  alone,  without 
any  horses,  and  still  cracking  away  incessantly;  so  accustomed  has  the 
wretch  become  to  it  in  consequence  of  the  unwarrantable  toleration  of 
this  practice.  A  man's  body  and  the  needs  of  his  body  are  now  everywhere 
treated  with  a  tender  indulgence.  Is  the  thinking  mind,  then,  to  be  the 
only  thing  that  is  never  to  obtain  the  slightest  measure  of  consideration  or 
protection,  to  say  nothing  of  respect  ?  Carters,  porters,  messengers — these 
are  the  beasts  of  burden  amongst  mankind;  by  all  means  let  them  be  treated 
justly,  fairly,  indulgently,  and  with  forethought;  but  they  must  not  be 
permitted  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  higher  endeavors  of  humanity  by 
wantonly  making  a  noise.  How  many  great  and  splendid  thoughts,  I 
should  like,  to  know,  have  been  lost  to  the  world  by  the  crack  of  a  whip  ? 
If  I  had  the  upper  hand,  I  should  soon  produce  in  the  heads  of  these 
people  an  indissoluble  association  of  ideas  between  cracking  a  whip  and 
getting  a  whipping. 

Let  us  hope  that  the  more  intelligent  and  refined  among  the  nations 
will  make  a  beginning  in  this  matter,  and  then  that  the  Germans  may 
take  example  by  it  and  follow  suit.1  Meanwhile,  I  may  quote  what 
Thomas  Hood  says  of  them  *  :  For  a  musical  nation,  they  are  the  most  noisy 
I  ever  met  with.  That  they  are  so  is  due  to  the  fact,  not  that  they  are 
more  fond  of  making  a  noise  than  other  people — they  would  deny  it  if 
you  asked  them — but  that  their  senses  are  obtuse;  consequently,  when 
they  hear  a  noise,  it  does  not  affect  them  much.  It  does  not  disturb  them 

1  According  to  a  notice  issued  by  the  Society  for  the  Protection  of  Animals  in  Munich, 
the  superfluous  whipping  and  the  cracking  of  whips  were,  in  December,  1858,  positively 
forbidden  in  Nuremberg. 

In  Uf  the  Rhine. 


ON  NOISE.  53 

in  reading  or  thinking,  simply  because  they  do  not  think;  they  only 
smoke,  which  is  their  substitute  for  thought.  The  general  toleration  of 
unnecessary  noise — the  slamming  of  doors,  for  instance,  a  very  unman- 
nerly and  ill-bred  thing — is  direct  evidence  that  the  prevailing  habit  of 
mind  is  dulness  and  lack  of  thought.  In  Germany  it  seems  as  though 
care  were  taken  that  no  one  should  ever  think  for  mere  noise — to  mention 
one  form  of  it,  the  way  in  which  drumming  goes  on  for  no  purpose  at  all. 
Finally,  as  regards  the  literature  of  the  subject  treated  of  in  this  chap- 
ter, I  have  only  one  work  to  recommend,  but  it  is  a  good  one.  I  refer  to  a 
poetical  epistle  in  terzo  rimo  by  the  famous  painter  Bronzino  entitled  De1 
Romori:  a  Messer  Luca  Martini.  It  gives  a  detailed  description  of  the 
torture  to  which  people  are  put  by  various  noises  of  a  small  Italian 
town.  Written  in  a  tragi-comic  style,  it  is  very  amusing.  The  epistle 
may  be  found  in  Opere  burlesche  del  Berni,  Arelino  ed altri,  Vol.  II.  p.  258; 
apparently  published  in  Utrecht  in  1771. 


A   FEW   PARABLES. 


IN  a  field  of  ripening  corn  I  came  to  a  place  which  had  been  trampled 
down  by  some  ruthless  foot ;  and  as  I  glanced  amongst  the  count- 
less stalks,  every  one  of  them  alike,  standing  there  so  erect  and  bearing 
the  full  weight  of  the  ear,  I  saw  a  multitude  of  different  flowers,  red  and 
blue  and  violet.  How  pretty  they  looked  as  they  grew  there  so  naturally 
with  their  little  foliage !  But,  thought  I,  they  are  quite  useless  :  they 
bear  no  fruit ;  they  are  mere  weeds,  suffered  to  remain  only  because  there 
is  no  getting  rid  of  them.  And  yet,  but  for  these  flowers,  there  would  be 
nothing  to  charm  the  eye  in  that  wilderness  of  stalks.  They  are  emble- 
matic of  poetry  and  art,  which  in  civic  life — so  severe,  but  still  useful  and 
not  without  its  font — play  the  same  part  as  flowers  in  the  corn. 

There  are  some  really  beautiful  landscapes  in  the  world,  but  the  hu- 
man figures  in  them  are  poor,  and  you  had  better  not  look  at  them. 

The  fly  should  be  used  as  the  symbol  of  impertinence  and  audacity  ; 
for  whilst  all  other  animals  snun  man  more  than  anything  else,  and  run 
away  even  before  he  comes  near  them,  the  fly  lights  upon  his  very  nose. 

Once,  as  I  was  botanising  under  an  oak,  I  found  amongst  a  number 
of  other  plants  of  similar  height  one  that  was  dark  in  color,  with  tightly 
closed  leaves  and  a  stalk  that  was  very  straight  and  stiff.  When  I 
touched  it,  it  said  to  me  in  firm  tones  :  Let  me  alone ;  I  am  not  for  your 
collection,  like  these  plants  to  which  Nature  has  given  only  a  single  year  of  life, 
I  am  a  little  oak. 

So  it  is  with  a  man  whose  influence  is  to  last  for  hundreds  of  years. 
As  a  child,  as  a  youth,  often  even  as  a  full-grown  man,  nay,  his  whole 
life  long,  he  goes  about  among  his  fellows,  looking  like  them  and  seem- 
ingly as  unimportant.  But  let  him  alone;  he  will  not  die.  Time  will 
come  and  bring  those  who  know  how  to  value  him. 

The  man  who  goes  up  in  a  balloon  does  not  feel  as  though  he  were 
ascending;  he  only  sees  the  earth  sinking  deeper  and  deeper  under  him. 

This  is  a  mystery  which  only  those  will  understand  who  feel  the  truth 
of  it 

54 


A  FEW  PARABLES.  55 

Your  estimation  of  a  man's  size  will  be  affected  by  the  distance  at  which 
you  stand  from  him,  but  in  two  entirely  opposite  ways,  according  as  it  is 
his  physical  or  his  mental  stature  that  you  are  considering.  The  one  will 
seem  smaller,  the  farther  off  you  move;  the  other  greater. 

Wisdom  which  is  only  theoretical  and  never  put  into  practice;  is  like 
a  double  rose  ;  its  color  and  its  perfume  are  delightful,  but  it  withers 
away  and  leaves  no  seed. 

No  rose  without  a  thorn.      Yes,  but  many  a  thorn  without  a  rose. 

A  wide-spreading  apple-tree  stood  in  full  bloom,  and  behind  it  a 
straight  fir  raised  its  dark  and  tapering  head.  Look  at  the  thousands  of  gay 
blossoms  which  cover  me  everywhere,  said  the  apple-tree,  what  have  you  to 
show  in  comparison  j3  Dark-green  needles !  That  is  true,  replied  the  fir, 
but  <when  winter  comes,  you  will  be  bared  of  your  glory  ;  and  I  shall  be  as  I 
am  now. 

Nature  covers  all  her  works  with  a  varnish  of  beauty,  like  the  tender 
bloom  that  is  breathed,  as  it  were,  on  the  surface  of  a  peach  or  a  plum. 
Painters  and  poets  lay  themselves  out  to  take  off  this  varnish,  to  store  it 
up,  and  give  it  to  us  to  be  enjoyed  at  our  leisure.  We  drink  deep  of  this 
beauty  long  before  we  enter  upon  life  itself;  and  when  afterwards  we  come 
to  see  the  works  of  Nature  for  ourselves,  the  varnish  is  gone:  the  artists 
have  used  it  up  and  we  have  enjoyed  it  in  advance.  Thus  it  is  that  the 
world  so  often  appears  harsh  and  devoid  of  charm,  nay,  actually  repul- 
sive. It  were  better  to  leave  us  to  discover  the  varnish  for  ourselves. 
This  would  mean  that  we  should  not  enjoy  it  all  at  once  and  in  large 
quantities;  we  should  have  no  finished  pictures,  no  perfect  poems;  but 
we  should  look  at  all  things  in  that  genial  and  pleasing  light  in  which 
even  now  a  child  of  Nature  sometimes  sees  them — some  one  who  has  not 
anticipated  his  aesthetic  pleasures  by  the  help  of  art,  or  taken  the  charms 
of  life  too  early. 

The  Cathedral  in  Mayence  is  so  shut  in  by  the  houses  that  are  built 
round  about  it,  that  there  is  no  one  spot  from  which  you  can  see  it  as  a 
whole.  This  is  symbolic  of  everything  great  or  beautiful  in  the  world. 
It  ought  to  exist  for  its  own  sake  alone,  but  before  very  long  it  is  misused 
to  serve  alien  ends.  People  come  from  all  directions  wanting  to  find  in 
it  support  and  maintenance  for  themselves;  they  stand  in  the  way  and 
spoil  its  effect.  To  be  sure,  there  is  nothing  surprising  in  this,  for  in  a 
world  of  need  and  imperfection  everything  is  seized  upon  which  can  be 
used  to  satisfy  want  Nothing  is  exempt  from  this  service,  no,  not  even 
those  very  things  which  arise  only  when  need  and  \vant  are  for  a  moment 
lost  sight  of — the  beautiful  and  the  true,  sought  for  their  own  sakes. 

This  is  especially  illustrated  and  corroborated  in  the  case  of  institutions 


56  STUDIES  IN  PESSIMISM. 

— whether  great  or  small,  wealthy  or  poor,  founded,  no  matter  in  what 
century  or  in  what  land,  to  maintain  and  advance  human  knowledge,  and 
generally  to  afford  help  to  those  intellectual  efforts  which  ennoble  the  race. 
Wherever  these  institutions  may  be,  it  is  not  long  before  people  sneak  up 
to  them  under  the  pretence  of  wishing  to  further  those  special  ends,  while 
they  are  really  led  on  by  the  desire  to  secure  the  emoluments  which  have 
been  left  for  their  furtherance,  and  thus  to  satisfy  certain  coarse  and  bru- 
tal instincts  of  their  own.  Thus  it  is  that  we  come  to  have  so  many  char- 
latans in  every  branch  of  knowledge.  The  charlatan  takes  very  different 
shapes,  according  to  circumstances;  but  at  bottom  he  is  a  man  who  cares 
nothing  about  knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  and  only  strives  to  gain  the  sem- 
blance of  it  that  he  may  use  it  for  his  own  personal  ends,  which  are  al- 
ways selfish  and  material. 

Every  hero  is  a  Samson.  The  strong  man  succumbs  to  the  intrigues 
of  the  weak  and  the  many  ;  and  if  in  the  end  he  loses  all  patience  he 
crushes  both  them  and  himself.  Or  he  is  like  Gulliver  at  Liliput  over- 
whelmed by  an  enormous  number  of  little  men. 

A  mother  gave  her  children  ^Esop's  fables  to  read,  in  the  hope  of  edu- 
cating and  improving  their  minds  ;  but  they  very  soon  brought  the  book 
back,  and  the  eldest,  wise  beyond  his  years,  delivered  himself  as  follows: 
This  is  no  book  for  us:  ifs  much  too  childish  and  stupid.  You  cant  make  us 
believe  that  foxes  and  wolves  and  ravens  are  able  to  talk;  we've  got  beyond 
stories  of  that  kind  I 

In  these  young  hopefuls  you  have  the  enlightened  Rationalists  of  the 
future. 

A  number  of  porcupines  huddled  together  for  warmth  on  a  cold  day 
in  winter ;  but,  as  they  began  to  prick  one  another  with  their  quills, 
they  were  obliged  to  disperse.  However,  the  cold  drove  them  together 
again,  when  just  the  same  thing  happened.  At  last,  after  many  turns  of 
huddling  and  dispersing,  they  discovered  that  they  would  be  best  off 
by  remaining  at  a  little  distance  from  one  another.  In  the  same  way  the 
need  of  society  drives  the  human  porcupines  together,  only  to  be  mutually 
repelled  by  the  many  prickly  and  disagreeable  qualities  of  their  nature. 
The  moderate  distance  which  they  at  last  discover  to  be  the  only  toler- 
able condition  of  intercourse,  is  the  code  of  politeness  and  fine  manners  ; 
and  those  who  transgress  it  are  roughly  told — in  the  English  phrase — to 
keep  their  distance.  By  this  arrangement  the  mutual  need  of  warmth  is 
only  very  moderately  satisfied  ;  but  then  people  do  not  get  pricked.  A 
man  who  has  some  heat  in  himself  prefers  to  remain  outside,  where  he 
will  neither  prick  other  people  nor  get  pricked  himself. 

THE  END. 


CATALOGUE 


THE  HUMBOLDT  LIBRARY 

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ical  and  other  natural  phenomena.    By 

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No.  23. 

Scientific  Sophisms.    A  review  of  cur- 

Wo.   2.    Forms  of  Water  in  Clouds  and  Rivern, 
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The  Origin  of  Nations.    By  Prof.  Geo. 

Political  Society.     By  Walter  Bagehot, 

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author  of  "The  English  Constitution." 
No.    4.    Man's  Place  In  Nature,  (with  numerous 

No.  26. 

The  Evolutionist  at  Large.    By  Grant 

Allen. 

illustrations).     By    Thomas   H.  Huxley, 
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No.    6.    Education,     Intellectual,     Moral,     and 

No.  27. 

The  History  of  Landholding  in  Eng- 
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Ko.  28. 

Fashion  in  Deformity,  as  illustrated 
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No.   6.    Town  Geology.      With    Appendix    on 
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ized  Races,    (numerous  illustrations)  .    By 
William  Henry  Flowur,  F.R.S. 

No,    7.    The   Conservation  of  Energy,    (with 
numerous  illustrations).    By  Balf  our  Stew- 

To. 29. 

Facts  and  Fictions  of  Zoology,  (nt«- 

merous  illustrations).    By  Andrew  Wilson. 
Ph.D. 

art,  LL.D. 

No.  30. 

The    Study  of  Words.      Part   I.     By 

No.    8.    The  Study  of  Languages,  brought  back 

Richard  Chenevix  Trench. 

to  its  true  principles.    By  C.  Marcel. 

No.  31. 

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No.  32. 

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By  Richard  A.  Proctor. 

to    Music,  (numerous  illustrations),  By 
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ITo.  33. 

Vignettes    from    Nature.    By    Grant 

Allen. 

No.  11.  )  The  Naturalist  on  the  River  Ama- 
>     zons.    A  record  of  11  years  of  travel. 

17o.  34. 

The  Philosophy  of  Style.    By  Herbert 

No.  12.)     By    Henry    Walter    Bates,  F.L.S.    (Act 

Spencer. 

sold  separately). 

Ko.  35. 

Oriental    Religions.     By  Jo  1m  Caird- 

No.  13.    Hind  and  Body.    The  theories  of  their 

Pres.  Univ.  Glasgow,  and  Others; 

relations.    By  Alex.  Bain,  LL.D. 

ITo.  36. 

Lectures   on  Evolution.     (IUus!~ited)  .) 

By  Prof.  T.  H.  Huxley. 

>o.  14.    The  Wonders  of  the  Heavens,  (thirty- 

two  illustrations).  By  Camille  Flammarion. 

ITo.  37. 

Six  Lectures  on  Light.     (Illustrated}- 

No.  16.    Longevity.    The    means  of   prolonging 

By  Prof.  John  Tyndall. 

life  after  middle  age.    By  John  Gardner, 

No.  38. 

Geological      Sketches.     Part     I.     By 

M.D. 

Archibald  Geikie,  F.R.S. 

"No.  16.    The  Origin  of  Species.    By  Thomas  H. 

No.  39. 

Geological  Sketches.    Part  II. 

Huxley,  F.R.S. 

No.  40. 

The  Evidence  of  Organic  Evolxition. 

No.  17.    Progress:   Its  Law  and  Cause.    With 

By  George  .1,  Romanes.  F.R.S. 

other  disquisitions.  By  Herbert  Spencer. 

No.  41. 

Current  Discussions  iii  Science.    By 

W.  M.  Williams,  F.C.S. 

No.  18.    Lessons  in  Electricity,    (sixty   illustra- 
tions).   By  John  Tyndall,  F.R.S. 

No.  42. 

History  of  the   Science  of  Politics. 

By  Frederick  Pollock. 

No.  19.    Familiar  Essays    on  Scientific  Sub- 

No. 43. 

Darwin    and     Hmnboldt.      By    Prof. 

jects.    By  Richard  A.  Proctor. 

Huxley,  Prof.  Agassi/,,  and  others. 

No.  20.    The  Romance  of  Astronomy.    By  B. 

No.  44. 

The  Dawn  of  History.     Parti.     By  C. 

Kalley  Miller,  M.A. 

F.  Keary,  of  the  British  Museum. 

No.  21.    The  Physical  Basis  of  Life,  -with  other 
essays.    By  Thomas  H.  Huxley,  F.R.S. 

No.  45. 

The  Dawn  of  History.    Par*  IT 

3fo.  46.  The  Diseases  of  Memory.  By  Th. 
Bibot.  Translated  from  the  French  by 
J.  Fitzgerald,  M.A. 


No.  47. 
Ho.  48. 
No.  49. 


The    Childhood     of     Religion. 

Edward  Clodd.  F.R.A.S. 


By 


Irife  in  Mature. 

Hinton. 


(Illtutrated.)    By  James 


The  Son  ;  its  Constitution,  its  Phenom- 
ena, its  Condition.  By  Judge  Nathan  T. 
C-arr,  Colnmbua,  Ind. 

No.  60.  Money  and  the  Mechanism  of  Ex- 
change. Part  I.  By  Prof.  W.  Stanley 
Jevons,  F.B.S. 

No.  51.    Money  and  the  Mechanism  of  Ex- 

change.   Part  II. 

No.  62.    The  Disease*  of   the    Will.    By  Th. 

Hihot.    Translated  from  the  French  by 
i.  Fi'zgerald. 

No.  63.  Animal  Automatism,  and  other  Essays, 
By  Prof.  T.  H.  Huxley,  F.R.8. 


No.  64. 
No.  55. 


The  Birth  and  Growth  of  Myth. 

Edward  Clodd,  F.R.A.S. 


By 


The  Scientific  Basis  of  Morals,  and 

other  Essays.  By  William  Kinngdom  Clif- 

ford, F.R.8. 

No.  56.    Illusions.    Part  I.    By  James  Sully. 
No.  57.     Illusions.    Part  II. 
No.  53.    The  Origin  of  Species.    ("Double  num- 

ber).   Part  I.    By  Charles  Darwin. 
No.  59.    The  Origin  of  Species.    Double  num- 

ber.   Part  II. 


No.  CO.    The   Childhood   of  the  World. 
Edward  Clodd. 


By 


No.  Cl.  Miscellaneous  Essays.  By  Richard  A. 
Proctor. 

V.o.  G2    The  Religions  of  the  Ancient  World. 

By  Prof.  Geo.  Rawlinson,  Univ.  of  Oxford, 
(Doable  Number). 

Ho.  63.  Progressive  Morality.  By  Thomas 
Fowler,  LL.D.,  President  of  Corpus 
Christi  Coll.,  Oxford. 

No.  6i.  The  Distribution  of  Animals  and 
Plants.  By  A.  Russell  Wallace  and  W. 
T.  Thistleton  Dyer. 

No.  65.    Conditions  of  Mental  Development: 

and  other  essays.    By  William  Klngdon 
Clifford. 

tfo.  66.  Technical  Education  :  and  other  essays. 
By  Thomas  H.  Huxley,  F.R.S. 

No.  67.  The  Black  Death.  An  account  of  the 
Great  Pestilence  of  the  14th  Century. 
By  J.  F.  C.  Hecker,  M.  D. 

Ko.  68.  Three  Essays.  By  Herbert  Spencer. 
Special  Number. 

No.  69.  Fctichism:  A  Contribution  to  Anthropo- 
logy and  the  History  of  Religion.  L*y 
Fritz  tichultze,  Ph.D.  Double  number. 

No.  70.    Essays   Speculative  and   Practical. 

By  Herbert  Spencer. 

No  71.    Anthropology.    By  Daniel  Wilson,  Ph. 

D.  With  Appendix  on  Archaeology.    Ey 

E.  B.  Tylor,  F.B.S. 

Jfo.  72.  The  Dancing  Mania  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  By  J.  F.  C.  Becker,  1LD- 


Ho.  73.    jsYoliition  in  History,  Hang;nago  and 

Scieuue.  i'our  AL.ure8»es  delivered  at 
the  Lou  Jon  Crystal  Palace  School  of  Art. 
Science  aud  Literature. 

No.  74. 1  The  Descent  of  Man,  and  Selection  in 
No.  75.  J  Relation  to  Sex.  (Numerous  Illustration*} 
No.  76.  f  By  Charles  Darwin.  A'o».  74,  75,  76  are. 
No.  77.  J  tingle  Ko*.;  No.  77.  i*  a  double  No. 

No.  78.  Historical  Sketch  of  the  Distribu- 
tion of  £and  in  England.  By  Wil- 
liam Lloyd  Birkbeck,  M.A. 

No.  79.  Scientific  Aspect  of  Home  Familiar 
Things.  By  W.  M.  Williams. 

No.  80.  Charles  Darwin.  His  Life  and  Work" 
By  Grant  Allen.  (Double  number). 

No.  81.  The  Mystery  of  Matter,  and  the 
Philosophy  of  Ignorance.  Two  Es- 
says by  J.  Allanson  Picton.  « 

No.  82.  Illusions  of  the  Senses:  and  other  Es- 
says. By  Richard  A.  Proctor. 

No.  83.    Profit-Sharing  Between  Capital  and 

Labor.  Six  Essays.  By  Sedley  Taylor. 
M.A. 

No.  84.  Studies  of  Animated  Nature.  Four 
Essays  on  Natural  History.  By  W.  8. 
Dallas,  F.L.S. 

No.  85.    The  Essential  Nature   of    Religion. 

By  J.  Allanson  Pictou. 

No.  86.  The  Unseen  Universe,  and  the  Philoso- 
phy of  the  Pure  Sciences.  By  Prof.  Win. 
Kicgdon  Clifford.  F.R.8. 

No.  87.  The  Morphine  Habit.  By  Dr.  B.  Ball, 
of  the  Paris  Faculty  of  Medicine. 

No.  88.  Science  and  Crime  and  other  Essays. 
By  Andrew  Wilson.  F.R.S.E. 

No.  89.  The  Genesis  of  Science.  By  Herbert 
Spencer. 

No.  90.  Notes  on  Earthquakes:  with  Fourteen 
Miscellaneous  Lssays.  By  Richard  A. 
Proctor. 

No.  91.    The  Rise  of    Universities.     By  8.  8- 

Laurie,  LL.D.    (Double  number).   ( 

No.  92.  The  Formation  of  Vegetable  Mould 
through  the  Action  of  Eartlx 
"Worms.  By  Charles  Darwin.  LL.D. 
F.R.S.  (Double  number). 

No.  93.  Scientific  Methods  of  Capital  Pun- 
ishment. By  J.  Mount  Bleyer,  M.D. 
(Special  number). 

No.  94,    The  Factors  of  Organic  Evolution. 

By  Herbert  Spencer. 

No.  95.    The  Diseases  of  Personality.    By  Th. 

Ribot.  Translated  from  the  French  by 
J.  Fitzgerald,  M.A. 

No.  96.  A  Half-Century  of  Science.  By  Prof. 
Thomas  H.  Huxley,  and  Grant  Allen. 

No.  97.    The  Pleasures  of  Life.    By  Sir  Jo) 
Lubbock,  Bart. 

No.  98.  Cosmic  Emotion:  Also  the  Teach 
ings  of  Science.  By  William  Eingdon 
Clifford.  (Special  number). 

No,  93,  Nature  Studies.  By  Prof.  F.  R.  Eatoa 
Lowe ;  Dr.  Robert  Brown,  F.L.S. ;  Geo 
G.  Chisholm,  F.R.G.S.,  and  James  Dal. 
las,  FX.S. 


no.  iw.  science  and  Poetry,  with  other  Es- 
says. By  Andrew  Wilson,  F.B.8.E. 

No.  101.  Esthetics;  Dreams  and  Association 
of  Ideas.  By  Jas.  Sully  and  Geo. 
Croom  Robertson. 

.No.  102.  Ultimate  Finance;  A  Trne  Theory 
of  Co-operation.  By  WillUm  Nelson 
Black. 

Ko.  103.  The  Coming  Slavery;  The  Sins  of 
Legislators;  The  Great  Political 
Superstition.  By  Herbert  Speucer. 

Ho.  104.  Tropical  Africa.  By  Henry  Drum- 
mond,  F.H.H. 

Ho.  106.  Freedom  in  Science  and  Teaching1. 
By  Ernst  Haeckel,  of  the  University  of 
Jena.  With  a  Prefatory  Note  by  Prof. 
Huxlay. 

Ho.  106.  Force  and  Energy.  A  Theory  of 
Dynamics.  By  Grant  Allen. 

Ho.  107.  Ultimate  Finance.    A  True  Theory 

of    Wealth.      By     William      Nelson 

Black. 
Ho.  108.  English,  Past  and  Present.    Part.  I. 

By  Richard  Chenevix  Trench,  (Double 

number). 

Ho.  109.  English,  Past  and  Present.  Part  IL. 
By  Richard  Chenevix  Trench. 

Ho.  110.  The  Story  of  Creation.  A  Plain  Ac- 
count of  Evolution.  By  Edward 
Clodd.  (Double  number). 

No.  111.  The  Pleasures  of  life,  Part  II.    By  Sir 

John  Lubbock,  Bart. 
No.  112.  Psychology   of    Attention.       By   Th. 

Ribot.    Translated  from  the  French  by  J. 
Fitzgerald,  M.A. 

No.  113.  Hypnotism.  Its  History  and  Develop- 
ment. By  Fredrik  Bjornstrom,  M.D., 
Head  Physician  of  the  Stockholm  Hospi- 
tal, Professor  of  Psychiatry.  Late  Royal 
Swedish  Medical  Councillor.  Authorized 
Translation  from  the  Second  Swedish 
Edition  by  Baron  Nils  Posse,  M.G.,  Direc- 
tor of  the  Boston  School  of  Gymnastics. 
(Double  Number.) 

5o.ll4.  Christianity  and  Agnosticism.  A 
Controversy.  Consisting  of  papers 
contributed  to  The  Nineteenth  Century  by 
Henry  Wace,  D.D.,  Prof.  Thomas  H.  Hux- 
ley, The  Bishop  of  Peterborough,  W.  H. 
Mallock,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  pouble 
Number.) 

No.  115.  DarwinUm :  An  Exposition  of  the  Theory 
of  Natural  Selection,  with  some  of  its 
applications.  Part  I.  By  Alfred  Russel 
Wallace,  LL.D.,  F.L.8.,  etc.  Illustrated. 
(Double  Number.) 

No.  116.  Darwinism :  An  Exposition  of  the 
Theory  of  Natural  Selection,  with  some 
of  its  Applications.  Part  II.  Illustrated. 
(Double  Number.) 

No.  117.  Modern  Science  and  Mod.  Thought. 

By     8.      Laing.      Illustrated.      (Double 
Number.) 

No.  118.  Modern  Science  and  Mod.  Thought. 

Part  II.    By  S.  Laing. 

No.  119.  The  Electric  Light  and  The  Storing  of 
Electrical  Energy.  (Illustrated)  Gerald 
Molloy.  D.D.,  D.Sc. 

»0. 120.  The  Modern  Theory  of  Heat  and  The 

1  Sun  as  a  Storehouse  ef  energy.     (Illus- 

trated.)   Gerald  Molloy,  D.D.,  D.Sc. 


No.  121.  Utilitarianism.    By  Jonn  Stuart  Mill. 

No.  122.  Upon  the  Origin  of  Alpine  ami 
Italian  Lakes  and  upon  Glacial  Kro 
sion.  Maps  and  Illustrations.  By  Ram- 
sey, Ball,  Murchison,  Studer,  Favre, 
Whymper  and  Spencer.  Part  I.  (Double 
Number.) 

No.  123.  Upon  the  Origin  of  Alpine  .-mil 
Italian  Lakes,  Ktc.,  Etc.  Part  II. 

No.  124.  The  Quintessence  of  Socialism.  By 
Prof.  A.  Schaffle. 

{Darwinism  &  Politics.    By  David  G. 
Ritchie,  M.A. 
Aministrative  Nihilism.    By  Thomas 
Huxley,  F.R.S. 

No.  126.  Physiognomy  &  Expression.  By  P. 
Mantegazza.  Illustrated.  Part  I.  (Dou- 
ble Number. ) 

No.  127.  Physiognomy  &  Expression.  Part  II. 
(Double  Number.) 

No.  128.  The  Industrial  Revolution.  By  Arn- 
old ToyHbee,  Tutor  of  Baliol  College, 
Oxford.  With  a  short  memoir  by  B, 
Jowett.  Part  I.  (Double  Number.) 

No.  129.  The  Industrial  Revolution.  Part  II, 
(Double  Number.) 

No.  130.  The  Origin  of  the  Aryans.  By  Dr., 
Isaac  Taylor.  Illustrated.  Part  I.  (Dou- 
ble Number.) 

No.  131.  The  Origin  of  the  Aryans.  Part  II, 
(Double  Number.) 

No.  132.  The  Evolution  of  Sex.  By  Prof.  P. 
Geddes  and  J.  Arthur  Thomson.  Illus- 
trated. Part  I.  (Double  Number.) 

No.  133.  The  Evolution  of  Sex.  Part  II.  (Dou- 
ble Number.) 

No.  134.  The  Law  of  Private  Right.  By  George 
H.  Smith.  (Double  Number.) 

No.  135.  Capital.  A  Critical  Analysis  of  Capitalist 
Production.  By  Karl  Marx.  Part  I. 
(Double  Number.) 

No.  136.  Capital.    Partir.    (Double  Number.) 

No.  137.  Capital.    Part  III.    (Double  Number.), 

No.  138.  Capital.    Part  IV.    (Double  Number.\ 

No.  139.  Ugntning,  Thunder  and  Lightning  Con- 
ductors. (Illustrated.)  By  Gerald  Mol- 
loy, D.D..D.SC. 

No  140.  What  is  Music?  With  an  appendix  oa 
How  the  Geometrical  Lines  have  their 
Counterparts  in  Music.  By  Isaac  L.  Rice. 

No  141.  Are  the  Effects  of  Use  and  Disuse  In- 
herited ?  By  William  Platt  Ball. 

No.  142.  A  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Wo- 
man. By  Mary  Wollstonecraft.  With; 
an  Introduction  by  Mrs.  Henry  Fawcet. 
Part  I.  (Double  Number.) 

No  143.  A  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Wo- 
man. Part  II.  (Double  Numbir.) 

No.  144.  Civilization:  Its  Cause  and  Cure. 
By  Edward  Carpenter. 

No.  146.  Body  and  Mind,  By  William  Kingdon 
Clifford. 

No.  146.  Social  Diseases  and  Worse  Reme- 
dies. By  Thos.  H.  Huxley,  F.  R.  8. 

No.  147.  The  Soul  of  Man  under  Socialism. 
By  O«car  Wilde. 

No.  148.  Electricity,  the  Science  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century.  By  E.  O.  Cail 
lard.  (Illus.)  Part  I.  Double  number. 

No.  149.    The  same.    Part  II. 


No.  150.  Degeneration:  A  Chapter  in  Dar- 
winism. (Illustrated.)  By  E.  Ray 
Lancaster,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  F.R.8. 

No.  151. 1    Mental    Suggestion.         By   Dr.  J. 
No.  152. )      Ochorowicz.    Part  I.     (Double    Num- 
ber.) 


No.  153.)  Mental     Suggestion.           Part     II. 

No.  154.  J  (Double  Nam  her.) 

No.  155.)  Mental      Suggestion.          Part     III. 

No.  156.)  (Double  Number.) 

No.  157.)  Mental     Suggestion.           Part    IV. 

No.  158. )  (Double  Number.1 


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THE  FACTORS  OF  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION. 

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LIGHT  SCIENCE  FOR  LEISURE  HOURS. 
FAMILIAR  ESSAYS  ON  SCIENTIFIC  SUBJECTS. 
HEREDITARY  TRAITS,  and  other  Essays. 
MISCELLANEOUS  ESSAYS. 

ILLUSIONS  OF  THE  SENSES,  said  other  Essays. 

NOTES  ON  EARTHQUAKES,vrith  fourteen  miscellaneous  Essays. 

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SEEING  AND  THINKING. 

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CONDITIONS  OF  MENTAL  DEVELOPMENT,  and  other  Essays. 
THE  UNSEEN  UNIVERSE,  and  the  Philosophy  of  the  Pure  Sciences. 
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THE  DISEASES  OF  THE  WILL,  and 
THE  DISEASES  OF  PERSONALITY, 

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THE  SUN ;  its  Constitution,  its  Phenomena,  its  Condition.     By  Nathan  T. 

Carr.LL.D. 

Three  books  in  one  vol.  .  .  .  .  .  1.00 

POLITICAL  SCIENCE,   CONTAINING  : 

.PHYSICS  AND  POLITICS.  An  application  of  the  principles  of  Natura1 
Science  to  Political  Society.  By  Walter  Bagehot,  author  of  "  The  English 
Constitution." 

HISTORY  OF  THE  SCIENCE  OF  POLITICS.  By  Frederick 
Pollock. 

Two  books  in  one  vol.  .  .  :  .  .  .          .75 

THE  LAND  QUESTION,  CONTAINING  : 

THE   HISTORY   OF    LAND  HOLDING    IN   ENGLAND.      By 

Joseph  Fisher,  F.R.H.S.,  and 

.HISTORICAL  SKETCH  OF  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  LAND 
IN  ENGLAND.  By  William  Lloyd  Birbeck,  M.A. 

Two  books  in  one  vol.  .  .  .  .  .  .          .75 

THE  MYSTERY  OF  MATTER,  and  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  IGNOR- 
ANCE. 

THE  ESSENTIAL  NATURE  OF  RELIGION,  By  J.  Allanson 
Picton.  Two  books  in  one  vol.  Cloth.  .  .  .  .  .75 

SCIENCE  AND  CRIME,  and 

.SCIENCE  AND  POETRY,  with  other  Essays.  By  Andrew  Wilson, 
F.R.S.E.  Two  books  in  one  vol.  Cloth.  ...  .75 

CURRENT  DISCUSSIONS  IN  SCIENCE,  and 

SCIENTIFIC  ASPECT  OF   SOME   FAMILIAR    THINGS.    By 

W.  M.  Williams,  F.C.S. 

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THE  BLACK  DEATH,  an  Account  of  the  Great  Pestilence  of  the  Four- 
teenth Century,  and 
THE  DANCING  MANIA  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES.     By  J.  F.  C. 

Hecker,  M.D. 

Two  books  in  one  vol.     Cloth.  ....  .75 


WOEKS    BY    PBOFESSOB    HUXLEY. 

MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  (with  numerous  illustrations). 
THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES* 

Two  books  in  one  vol.    Cloth.  .  .*  •  •        •"* 

THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE,  with  other  Essays. 
LECTURES  ON  EVOLUTION,  illustrated.     By  Prof.   T.   H.  Huxley. 
Two  books  in  one  vol.     Cloth.  .....        .75 

ANIMAL  AUTOMATISM,  and   other  Essays. 
TECHNICAL  EDUCATION,  and  other  Essays. 

Two  books  in  one  vol.    Cloth.  .  .  .         .75 

IsTIEW     IBOOIKIS. 
UPON  THE    ORIGIN  OF  ALPINE  AND   ITALIAN  LAKES; 

AND  UPON  GLACIAL  EROSION.  A  series  of  papers  by  Sir  A.  C.  RAMSAY, 
F.R.S.,  President  of  the  Geological  Society.  JOHN  BALL,  M.R.I.A.,  F.L.S., 
&c.  Sir  RODEBICK  MUBOHISON,  F.R.S.,  D.C.L.,  President  of  the  Royal  Geog- 
raphical Society.  Prof.  A.  STUDEB,  of  Berne.  Prof.  A.  FAVBK,  of  Geneva. 
EDWABD  WHYMPER.  With  an  Introduction,  and  Notes  upon  the  Origin  and  History 
of  the  great  lakes  of  North  America,  by  Prof.  J.  W.  SPENCER,  State  Geologist  of 
Georgia.  Maps  and  Illustrations.  Cloth,  75  cts. 

PHYSIOGNOMY  AND  EXPRESSION.  By  PAOLO  MANTEGAZZA,  Sena- 
tor ;  Director  of  the  National  Museum  of  Anthropology,  Florence ;  President  of 
the  Italian  Society  of  Anthropology.  Illustrated.  Cloth,  $1.00. 

THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  OF  THE  18th  CENTURY  IN  ENG- 
LAND. Popular  Addresses,  Notes  and  Other  Fragments,  by  the  late  ARNOLD 
TOYNBEE,  Tutor  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  together  •with  a  short  memoir  by  B. 
JOWETT,  Master  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford.  Cloth,  $1.00. 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  ARYANS.  An  account  of  the  Prehistoric  Ethnology 
and  Civilization  of  Europe.  By  ISAAC  TAYLOB,  M.  A. ,  Litt.  D. ,  Hon.  LL.D.  Illus- 
trated. Cloth,  $1.00. 

THE  EVOL  UTION  OF  SEX.  By  Professor  PATBICK  GEDDES  and  J.  ARTHUR 
THOMSON.  Numerous  Illustrations.  Cloth,  $1.00. 

THE  LA  W  OF  PRIVA  TE  RIGHT.      By  GEORGE  H.    SMITH,   Author  of 

"ELEMENTS  OF  RIGHT  AND  THE  LAW,"  and  of  Essays  on  "THE  CER- 
TAINTY OF  THE  LAW  AND  THE  UNCERTAINTY  OF  JUDICIAL  INCIS- 
IONS," "THE  TRUE  METHOD  OF  LEGAL  EDUCATION,"  ami  other 
subjects.  Cloth,  .75 

CAPITAL:  A  CRITICAL  ANALYSIS  OF  CAPITALIST  PRO- 
DUCTION. By  KABL  MABX,  Translated  from  the  third  German  edition  by 
SAMUEL  MOORE  and  EDWARD  AVKLING,  and  edited  by  FBEDEBICK  ENGELS. — The 
only  American  Edition. — Carefully  Revised.  Cloth,  $1.75; 

"The  groat  merit  of  Marx,  therefore,  lies  in  the  work  he  has  done  as  a  scientific  inquirer  into 
the  economic  movement  of  modern  times,  as  the  Philosophic  historian  of  the  capitalistic  era. ' 
Encyclopedia  Sritannica. 

"  So  great  a  position  has  not  been  won  by  any  work  on  Economic  Science  since  the  appearance 
of  The  Wealth  of  Nations.  .  .  .  All  these  circi'.mstauces  invest,  therefore,  the  teachings  of  this  par- 
ticularly acute  thinker  with  an  interest  such  as  can  not  be  claimed  by  any  other  thinker  of  the  present 
day." — The  Athenaeum. 

A  VINDICATION  OF  THE  RIGHTS  OF  WOMEN  with  Strictures  on 
Political  and  Moral  Subjects.  By  MABY  WOLLSTONKCRAFT.  New  Edition  with  an 
introduction  by  MRS.  HENRY  FAWCETT.  Cloth,  $1  no 


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